The best training for being a founder or CEO is being a founder or CEO.” “Don’t stress so much about trying to get ready. “It may not be ideal to go directly from school to starting a company, but don’t obsess over the optimal circumstances,” Houston said. If you try to set a path - say, work at a small company, then a medium-sized company, and then a large company, and get a master’s degree and PhD in between, and then start your own company - you will be retired when the right time comes, Houston said. However, he added, this “anti-pattern of getting massively ready” will only get in the way of starting a company. Houston said he can understand that software engineers have a tendency to try to over-optimize things. Houston returned to campus April 18 to talk with students about his experience. In the 11 years since, Dropbox has grown from a cloud storage company based in a small apartment to a provider of business collaboration software with close to 2,000 employees - along with a March 23 initial public offering that has valued the company at more than $12 billion.

Drew Houston co-founded Dropbox in June 2007, one year after graduating from MIT, in response to the frustration of losing thumb drives.

Co founder of dropbox