CEO Drew Houston on solving the biggest problem with modern work

For our seventh episode of Working Smarter we’re
talking to Drew Houston, the co-founder and CEO of Dropbox. 


If you’ve been online long enough, it’s likely Dropbox was your
introduction to the cloud. The goal is still more or less the
same—give you one organized place for all your stuff—but it’s no
longer just about storing and syncing files. A hundred files on
your desktop is now a hundred tabs in your browser, and Houston
believes AI is what will finally bring calm to the chaos that’s
been created by the tools of modern work.


For Houston, AI’s potential is so great that its arrival feels
like a civilization shift. It’s also not just a professional
preoccupation; AI is a personal interest too. A few years ago he
decided to teach himself machine learning in his spare time—and
some of the AI tools Houston now uses to run Dropbox are ones he
built himself. 


Hear Houston discuss why it’s gotten so hard to find the
information you need to do your job, the types of tasks we'll
increasingly offload to our silicon brains, and what Dropbox is
doing to help make modern work more meaningful and fulfilling.


Show notes:


To learn more about Dropbox Dash and try Dash for free, visit
dropbox.com/dash

The two books Houston mentions are “High Output Management”
by Andy Grove and “The Effective Executive” by Peter Drucker



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Working Smarter is a new podcast from Dropbox about how AI is
changing the way we work and get stuff done.


You can listen to more episodes of Working Smarter on Apple
Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, or wherever you
get your podcasts. To read more stories and past interviews,
visit workingsmarter.ai


This show would not be possible without the talented team at
Cosmic Standard, namely: our producers Samiah Adams and Aja
Simpson, technical director Jacob Winik, and executive producer
Eliza Smith. Special thanks to Benjy Baptiste for production
assistance, our marketing and PR consultant Meggan Ellingboe, and
our illustrators, Fanny Luor and Justin Tran. Our theme song was
created by Doug Stuart. Working Smarter is hosted by Matthew
Braga.