In the early 2000s, accessing and sharing photos, documents, and other files among multiple people and across different devices meant sending painful email strings, plugging in clumsy thumb drives and muddling through confusing versions after versions. Founders Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi launched Dropbox to solve this problem, creating a file hosting service with the ability to sync files across operating systems, and a simple user interface that makes it easy to manage content and collaborate with others. Their attention to detail, passion for design, and focus on user experience are all part of what defined the company early on, and what has guided them as it has grown, expanding its services to help people work together better and accomplish more.

Accel’s Sameer Gandhi originally seeded Dropbox when Drew and Arash were working out of their North Beach apartment in San Francisco, and co-led Dropbox’s Series A in 2008. In 2018, nearly ten years after its official launch, Dropbox went public (NASDAQ: DBX), and today, it continues on its mission to help people be organized, stay focused, and get in sync with their teams.