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.

Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“Cryptocurrency and related software analytics tools are ‘The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic.’”

That’s not a quote from "The Big Lebowski" — at least, not directly. It’s a quote from a Washington, D.C., district court memorandum opinion on the role cryptocurrency analytics tools can play in government investigations. The author is Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

Keep ReadingShow less
Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

The financial technology transformation is driving competition, creating consumer choice, and shaping the future of finance. Hear from seven fintech leaders who are reshaping the future of finance, and join the inaugural Financial Technology Association Fintech Summit to learn more.

Keep ReadingShow less
FTA
The Financial Technology Association (FTA) represents industry leaders shaping the future of finance. We champion the power of technology-centered financial services and advocate for the modernization of financial regulation to support inclusion and responsible innovation.
Enterprise

AWS CEO: The cloud isn’t just about technology

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times.

Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

It will be the second re:Invent with CEO Adam Selipsky as leader of the industry’s largest cloud provider after his return last year to AWS from data visualization company Tableau Software.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

As of today, we will not publish any more stories. All of our newsletters, apart from our flagship, Source Code, will no longer be sent. Source Code will be published and sent for the next few weeks, but it will also close down in December.

Keep ReadingShow less
Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

Enterprise

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

On any given day, Lily AI runs hundreds of machine learning models using computer vision and natural language processing that are customized for its retail and ecommerce clients to make website product recommendations, forecast demand, and plan merchandising. But this spring when the company was in the market for a machine learning operations platform to manage its expanding model roster, it wasn’t easy to find a suitable off-the-shelf system that could handle such a large number of models in deployment while also meeting other criteria.

Some MLops platforms are not well-suited for maintaining even more than 10 machine learning models when it comes to keeping track of data, navigating their user interfaces, or reporting capabilities, Matthew Nokleby, machine learning manager for Lily AI’s product intelligence team, told Protocol earlier this year. “The duct tape starts to show,” he said.

Keep ReadingShow less
Kate Kaye

Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

Latest Stories
Bulletins