interview

How Dropbox is trying to bring order to WFH craziness

The company's new COO says it's "tying everything together" for all sorts of remote workers.

Olivia Nottebohm

"I really believe in this concept of creating a platform where you have a place," says new Dropbox COO Olivia Nottebohm.

Photo: Courtesy of Dropbox

Taking on a big new role is never easy. But try taking on a big new role amid one of the biggest public health crises in U.S. history.

Olivia Nottebohm joined Dropbox as chief operating officer at the end of January, when just a few cases of coronavirus had been detected in the U.S. Since then, she's had to navigate the implementation of work-from-home orders across Dropbox's 3,000 employees, spread around 13 countries, while getting to know a brand-new team and learning a brand-new product line.

So far, it's worked out pretty well: Dropbox swung to a profit for the first time in its history during the first quarter, and has seen similar surges in demand for its cloud-based file-sharing and collaboration tools that many of its rivals have also observed during this massive shift to remote working. Trials of Dropbox's Business product for enterprise customers are up 40% over the last few months, while trials of the individual plans are up 25%.

Nottebohm, fresh off a four-year stint running multiple sales and operational teams at Google Cloud, must now help Dropbox navigate what promises to be a chaotic second half of the year as COVID-19 continues to reshape work and business around the world. She thinks Dropbox has a central role to play: as a hub for workplaces of all sizes as its customers attempt to figure out new ways to keep on top of remote working.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Amid the pandemic, have you seen anything notable in terms of how people are using Dropbox? Was there an appreciable difference in levels of activity or some features that were used more heavily than maybe you would have expected?

We did see some really, really interesting spikes that tracked with the integrations that we have. So we saw 2,000% increase in the usage of our Zoom integration, and we saw record levels of integration usage with Slack and Atlassian. Which isn't surprising, but it was wonderful to see that our customers do value those integrations and are turning to those integrations as they shift to intense remote and distributed work.

As people start to talk about going back to offices in greater numbers, do you have a sense of how that will unfold for Dropbox, as office life starts to reboot?

We are constantly monitoring the trends. First and foremost, we're thinking about our own employees and their health and well-being. And so we have a team that we've set up that meets on a very frequent basis to be monitoring those [trends], how we're helping our own employees through this, and then, broadly, how we're helping our customers.

We see what the ecosystem is doing and what the other players are doing. And so we're trying to be very thoughtful about the guidance that we give our employees and making sure that they have enough visibility to plan for themselves and their families in a very uncertain time.

Twitter said last week that it's going to allow people to work from home permanently. Other companies like Google and Facebook have at least extended working from home through the end of 2020 and into 2021 in some cases. Have you made a similar determination?

We've determined that we are going to be working from home through the end of the summer and that employees have the option to be working from home through the end of the year. And then obviously we'll reassess at regular intervals.

One thing I've been talking to a lot of people about over the last month or so is how this new era of remote work will change product development strategies. It has opened up new opportunities for different kinds of products, different kinds of thinking about products in the way they're built.

About a year ago we launched this concept of the smart workspace, and we talked about the new desktop app. And as we actually see adoption of that, we've been really pleased to see how pervasive it is.

We've seen a 60% increase [in adoption] of the new desktop app during this time. And for us, what that means is that we have now over 350,000 teams on that new desktop app out of the 450,000 Dropbox Business teams that we have.

What that app allows you to do is really effectively move across applications in a very seamless way and always cut back to the workflow that you have within Dropbox. And what we're seeing is that is really appreciated by the customers, because we're providing that additional service of tying everything together at a time where people are working from home in a remote distributed way and having to navigate across this fragmented place.

So that's been gratifying, in the sense that we believe our customers are finding a ton of value in that, and that's why they're driving up those usage rates to that extent. And from a product roadmap perspective, the vision that we have and the belief we have is that we are truly providing a unique product to our customers because it's the only one that helps you organize across Microsoft, G Suite and the best of breed world.

One of the things I wanted to ask you about was your time at Google Cloud and how that informed what you're doing now at Dropbox. What gave you the idea to switch over to Dropbox, and what did you learn at Google Cloud that you're applying in your current role?

I really enjoyed my time at Google. It was an amazing experience building up that cloud business, and I was really attracted by Drew's [Houston] vision.

I was feeling the fragmentation in the workplace myself, on a very personal level and for my team, and really believe in this concept of creating a platform where you have a place, you almost have a home base, right? You're choosing which applications you're interfacing with, but in a much more structured and organized way so that you take out the fragmentation.

And then I really believe in Drew's leadership, it was very compelling. He's built an amazing company. He's built an incredible culture at Dropbox. Now that I've been here and I've gotten to know all of Dropbox … the company is really a stellar group of people. So I'm excited to be here.

In terms of what I learned … Google Cloud was similar. I worked on G Suite and what we call GCP, the Google Cloud Platform, which was the IaaS and PaaS portion of it. And we really touched all segments, we were selling G Suite to [very small businesses] all the way up through enterprise. And Dropbox is similarly in that pretty unique situation of a company that sells across customer segments and has to be very thoughtful in tailoring the product and making sure the product is delivering its highest value to those different customer segments.

Do you see that mix changing for Dropbox, in terms of focusing more on enterprise or focusing more on smaller businesses? It seems like maybe there's even more opportunity in small businesses, given their past lack of usage of some of these tools, as they move to remote work?

The wonderful part about Dropbox is that we have a relationship with our users before any seller shows up, right? It's very unique in that way.

And so to some extent we are building our best products for our customers and we see that they continue to adopt our products across the various customer segments. So as of now, no, I don't see that mix shifting. I continue to see that incredibly diversified portfolio both across customer segments and across verticals and industries.

Tom Krazit

Tom Krazit ( @tomkrazit) is Protocol's enterprise editor, covering cloud computing and enterprise technology out of the Pacific Northwest. He has written and edited stories about the technology industry for almost two decades for publications such as IDG, CNET, paidContent, and GeekWire, and served as executive editor of Gigaom and Structure.

drobox cloud enterprise software coronavirus covid-19 interview remote work
n26
Protocol | Fintech

How European fintech startup N26 is preparing for U.S. regulations

"There's a lot more scrutiny being placed on fintech. We are definitely mindful of it."

In an interview with Protocol, Stephanie Balint, N26's U.S. general manager, discussed the company's approach to regulations in the U.S.

Photo: N26

N26's monster $900 million funding round announced Monday underlined the German startup's momentum in the digital banking market.

Stephanie Balint, N26's U.S. general manager, said the funding will be used for expansion and also to improve "our core offering to make this the most reliable bank that our customers can trust," she told Protocol.

Keep Reading Show less
Benjamin Pimentel

Benjamin Pimentel ( @benpimentel) covers fintech from San Francisco. He has reported on many of the biggest tech stories over the past 20 years for the San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch and Business Insider, from the dot-com crash, the rise of cloud computing, social networking and AI to the impact of the Great Recession and the COVID crisis on Silicon Valley and beyond. He can be reached at bpimentel@protocol.com or via Signal at (510)731-8429.

n26 neobank
sponsored content
Sponsored Content

From Home to Hybrid: Asana’s COO Shares Back-to-Office Advice on Productivity

The way we work has fundamentally changed. COVID-19 upended business dealings and office work processes, putting into hyperdrive a move towards digital collaboration platforms that allow teams to streamline processes and communicate from anywhere. According to the International Data Corporation, the revenue for worldwide collaboration applications increased 32.9 percent from 2019 to 2020, reaching $22.6 billion; it's expected to become a $50.7 billion industry by 2025.

"While consumers and early adopter businesses had widely embraced collaborative applications prior to the pandemic, the market saw five years' worth of new users in the first six months of 2020," said Wayne Kurtzman, research director of social and collaboration at IDC. "This has cemented collaboration, at least to some extent, for every business, large and small."

Keep Reading Show less
Kate Silver

Kate Silver is an award-winning reporter and editor with 15-plus years of journalism experience. Based in Chicago, she specializes in feature and business reporting. Kate's reporting has appeared in the Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Atlantic's CityLab, Atlas Obscura, The Telegraph and many other outlets.

sponsored content sponsored
apple

Apple’s new MacBooks are the future — and the past

After years of reinventing the wheel, Apple's back to just building really good ones.

Apple brought back the ports.

Photo: Apple

The 2015 Pro was, by most accounts, one of the best laptops Apple ever made. It was fast and functional, and it had a great screen, a MagSafe charger, plenty of ports, a great keyboard and solid battery life. If you walked around practically any office in Silicon Valley, you'd see Pros everywhere.

Many of those users have been holding on to their increasingly old and dusty 2015 Pros, too, because right about when that computer came out was when Apple seemed to lose its way in the laptop market. It released the 12-inch MacBook, an incredibly thin and light computer that made a bunch of changes — a new keyboard and trackpad design chief among them — that eventually made their way around the rest of the MacBook lineup. Then came the Touch Bar, Apple's attempt to build an entirely new user interface into a laptop.

Keep Reading Show less
David Pierce

David Pierce ( @pierce) is Protocol's editorial director. Prior to joining Protocol, he was a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, a senior writer with Wired, and deputy editor at The Verge. He owns all the phones.

apple computer laptop macbook pro
Protocol | Workplace

The asynchronous work revolution is here. Here’s how to join.

Hello, deep work. Goodbye, meetings.

Protocol spoke to founders and tech execs who've embraced async and have tips on how to get started.

Image: Christopher T. Fong/Protocol

Imagine a company where there are no meetings — just time for deep, focused work punctuated by short conversations on Slack and project updates on Trello.

Now imagine a company where the no-meeting ethos is so ingrained that it's possible to work there for 10 years without ever speaking face-to-face with a single coworker, and for your boss to not even recognize the sound of your voice.

Keep Reading Show less
Michelle Ma
Michelle Ma (@himichellema) is a reporter at Protocol, where she writes about management, leadership and workplace issues in tech. Previously, she was a news editor of live journalism and special coverage for The Wall Street Journal. Prior to that, she worked as a staff writer at Wirecutter. She can be reached at mma@protocol.com.
async meetings slack tools workplace
Protocol | Workplace

#AppleToo activist says Apple fired her for deleting apps from her devices

Janneke Parrish says she was dismissed after deleting Robinhood, Pokemon Go and Google Drive from her work devices during an investigation inside the company.

The Apple Too movement is trying to organize Apple workers into a collective movement.
Photo: Bloomberg via Getty

Unlike most other companies, Apple asks that its employees use their work phones like personal ones — and for five years, Apple program manager Janneke Parrish did as she was told. But last week, when Apple asked Parrish for her devices in an internal investigation, she was afraid Apple would see her personal and private information. She disobeyed orders and deleted apps like Robinhood, Pokemon Go and Google Drive. Then Apple fired her.

Keep Reading Show less
Anna Kramer

Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (Twitter: @ anna_c_kramer, email: akramer@protocol.com), where she writes about labor and workplace issues. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.

apple workers unions
Latest Stories