Dropbox Chief to Join Elite Ranks of Idea-to-I.P.O. Founders
students,” said Kyle Vogt, 32, chief executive of the self-driving car company Cruise Automation, who met Mr. Houston at an M. I.T.
But according to interviews with more than a dozen people, Mr. Houston — a private man with a love of 1990s rock
and business books — built his company with an easygoing management style and a dry sense of humor, which helped him deal with the bumps along the way.
Running Dropbox, Mr. Houston was at first determined to aim its product — which lets people store
and access their files in the cloud — at consumers rather than businesses.
Dropbox, which is based in San Francisco, is unprofitable, and Mr. Houston now has to navigate through a challenging time, both guiding his company around the tech giants
that are squeezing into its space and adapting his frat guy persona to a changing culture.
“The default back then was to stay in Boston or go to New York and work for a hedge fund.”
In 2007, Mr. Houston entered Dropbox into the Boston program of Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley start-up incubator.
Last month, Dropbox filed to go public, and when it does Mr. Houston will become the newest
member of a small club of tech founders who steered a start-up all the way to Wall Street.
Whether Mr. Houston successfully takes Dropbox public will be closely watched, with other
privately held tech companies like Uber and Airbnb also edging toward an I. P.O.