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A comment on How to Earn a Billion Dollars. Parent comment

Re:How to Earn a Billion Dollars by bigiain on Monday June 15, 2026 @04:53AM (#48538471)
Isn't Dropbox the canonical HN example of a "stupid and obvious idea" that anybody could build for themselves and would never pay for?

Now with a 6bil market cap is seems.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

(Apologies to BrandonM for reminding everybody...)

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How to Earn a Billion Dollars by sam_lowry_ on Monday June 15, 2026 @06:24AM (#48539212)
> DataDog,

It's just grepping logs on steroids

> Sentry

Hooks on error handlers in JavaScript

> Snowflake

Anyone can just use parquet or DuckDB

>Okta

No digital sovereignty for those who can't manage users' passwords

> MongoDB

JSONB fields in Postgres, anyone?

/s

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How to Earn a Billion Dollars by latexr on Monday June 15, 2026 @10:05AM (#48541471)
> (Apologies to BrandonM for reminding everybody...)

BrandonM doesn’t mind:

> I really don’t mind the commentary. I’m long past being frustrated about being misinterpreted, and I learned a lot from it, anyway.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27070138

But dang does:

> my heart sinks a little every time I see this brought up

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27067281

It’s thoughtful context that I think everyone mentioning BrandonM and Dropbox should be familiar with.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How to Earn a Billion Dollars by jjmarr on Monday June 15, 2026 @04:10PM (#48546393)
I know nothing about BrandonM but I envisioned him as a highly technical person that knows what he is talking about.

He still couldn't evaluate whether an idea will be successful in the market. That's why Paul Graham in the OP admits he thought Airbnb was dumb idea. Then says not to speculate on what people want but to build something for yourself.

[ Parent | on HN ]