| Drew Houston | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 4, 1983 |
| Nationality | United States |
| Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Bachelor's degree) |
| Occupation | CEO of Dropbox |
| Employer | Dropbox |
| Net worth | US$400 million (2011)[1] |
Andrew W. "Drew" Houston is an American internet entrepreneur and is best known for being the founder and CEO of Dropbox, an online backup and storage service. According to Forbes magazine, he has a net worth of $400 million US dollars[1].
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Drew Houston was born in Acton, Massachusetts in 1983. He attended Acton-Boxborough Regional High School in the 1990s. He later graduated in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity.[2] It was there that he met Arash Ferdowsi who would later go on to be co-founder and CTO of Dropbox.
Before working on Dropbox, Drew Houston worked on a number of other startups which include Bit9, Accolade and Hubspot.[3]
Drew Houston reportedly conceived the idea for Dropbox after repeatedly forgetting his USB drive while he was a student at MIT. He says that existing services at the time "suffered problems with Internet latency, large files, bugs, or just made me think too much." He began making something for himself, but then realized that it could benefit others with the same problem.[4] Drew Houston founded Dropbox, Inc. in 2007, and shortly thereafter secured seed funding from Y Combinator.[5] Dropbox officially launched at 2008's TechCrunch50, an annual technology conference.[6]
Drew Houston has been called the best young tech entrepreneur by Business Week[7] and Dropbox has been touted as Y Combinator's most successful investment to date.[8]
Drew Houston has been named among the top 30 under 30 enterpreneurs by inc.com.[9][10]
Dropbox has been called one of the 20 best startups of Silicon Valley.[11]