Business Finance Homework Help

I don’t understand this Management question and need help to study.

1. Dropbox is a late mover in a crowded space. What opportunity did Houston see? Specifically, what are the key elements of Dropbox’s current business model?

2. Is Dropbox profitable as of June 2010? Are you optimistic about its prospects? How does your estimate of DropBox’s current profitability influence your evaluation of the venture’s prospects?

3. When he applied to Y Combinator (see case Exhibit 2) what hypothesis did Houston hold about key elements of Dropbox’s business model? As of June 2010, which of these hypotheses have been confirmed and which have been discarded? What assessment of the approach did Houston use to test the hypotheses? Did he waste time/resources or make notable mistakes? Can you imagine better ways to test hypotheses?

4. Imagine that the same time Dropbox was founded, Google decided to target the opportunity that Houston had identified. How would Google’s approach to pursuing G Drive have differed from the approach Dropbox team followed?

5. What should Houston do about the decision posed at the end of the case ie. creating a separate version for small and medium-sized SMBs customers? What process should he use to make this decision?