The Dropbox Mafia

ivelina

Published

October 10, 2024

Company "mafias" are all the rage, and we here at PIN love to dig deep into the most influential Tech Mafias, especially since we're huge on democratizing access to startup investing by supporting communities with all the legal and bureaucratic work when it comes to setting up a community investment club.

This week we have a total banger - the Dropbox Mafia. This alumni group is really one-of-a-kind, with over 30 successful companies founded by previous employees of Dropbox.

If you missed our previous posts, make sure to check the Twitter Mafia, Lyft Mafia, Stripe Mafia, Netflix Mafia, and InstaCart Mafia articles. Investing in fellow coworkers' startups, especially as a community or alumni group, is one of the best ways to get in early on deals as well as support the ideas and ventures of people you love and admire. Who knows what's around the corner in your own network and community!

Companies Covered:

Shift
Arc Technologies
Opal
Scale3 Labs
Teleport
Anrok
Persona
Convex
Doola
Slope
Solana
AgentSync
Butter Payments
Primer
Material Security
Ambient AI
Sentry
Gem
Lendtable
Scratch
Haven
Fly
Torch Technology
WorkOS
Nylas
Pilot
Dayslice
Forethought
Pavilion
Common Room
Metronome
Octant
Dover
Quiltt

Shift

Founder: Christian Ohler
‍Dropbox Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $504M
Investors: Threshold
Stage: Public

Christian worked as a Software Engineer at both Google and Dropbox. In 2014 he co-founded Shift, an online marketplace for buying and selling used cars.

Sentry

‍Founder: David Cramer
Dropbox Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $217M
Investors: NEA
Stage: Series E

David was a Software Engineer at Dropbox while working on Sentry as a side hustle, which eventually turned into a full time business. Sentry is a developer of an application monitoring platform that helps developers optimize the performance of their code.
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Arc Technologies

Founder: Raven Jiang
‍Dropbox Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $181M
Investors: Bain Capital Ventures
Stage: Series A

Raven is the co-founder and CTO of Arc, a full-service finance platform that provides software startups with customized financial products.

Anrok

Founder: Kannan Goundan
Dropbox Role: Programmer
Capital Raised: $24.3M
Investors: Sequoia Capital
Stage: Series A

Kannan is the co-founder and CTO of Anrok, which is a modern sales tax solution for SaaS businesses.

Persona

Founder: Charles Yeh
‍Dropbox Role: Technical Lead
Capital Raised: $217.5M
Investors: Index Ventures
Stage: Series C

Persona was started in 2018, it is an identity platform that helps business verify customer identities that brings trust to online interactions. Charles is the co-founder and CTO.

Convex

Founder: James Cowling
Dropbox Role: Senior Principal Engineer
Capital Raised: $29.6M
Investors: Andreessen Horowitz
Stage: Series A

James worked at Dropbox for 8 years before co-founding Convex in 2020. Convex is a serverless infrastructure company that has built the global state management platform for web developers.

Slope

Founder: Alice Deng
‍Dropbox Role: Product Manager
Capital Raised: $157.1M
Investors: Tiger Global Management
Stage: Series A

Alice co-founded two companies after working at Dropbox - Glisten AI and Slope. Slope is a “Buy Now, Pay Later” platform for B2B.

Solana

Founder: Anatoly Yakovenko
Dropbox Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $315.8M
Investors: Andreessen Horowitz
Stage: Seed

Solana is one of the most popular blockchains and crypto startups that builds and develops crypto apps for decentralized apps and marketplaces. Anatoly was a Software Engineer at Dropbox before co-founding Solana in 2017.

AgentSync

Founder: Jenn Knight
Dropbox Role: Head of Business Technology
Capital Raised: $111M
Investors: Tiger Global Management
Stage: Series B

AgentSync builds modern insurance infrastructure that connects carriers, agencies, MGAs, and producers. Jenn is the co-founder and CTO of AgentSync, and previously worked at LinkedIn, Dropbox, and Stripe.

Butter Payments

Founder: Vijay Menon
Dropbox Role: Product Lead
Capital Raised: $28.8M
Investors: Norwest Venture Partners
Stage: Series A

Vijay is the founder and CEO of Butter, a payments intelligence platform for resolving payment failures. He’s worked in leading positions at Dropbox, Microsoft and Scribd.

Material Security

Founder: Ryan Noon
Dropbox Role: Engineering Manager
Capital Raised: $162M
Investors: Andreessen Horowitz
Stage: Series C

Ryan is the founder of Material Security, an email security company that develops data-driven security software to protect an organization's users and data.

Ambient AI

Founder: Vikesh Khanna
‍Dropbox Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $52M
Investors: Andreessen Horowitz
Stage: Seed

Vikesh is the co-founder and CTO at Ambient AI, which integrates computer vision intelligence and camera infrastructure to sensor and prevent security incidents.

Octant

Founder: Ramsey Homsany
‍Dropbox Role: General Counsel
Capital Raised: $115M
Investors: Andreessen Horowitz
Stage: Series B

Ramsey managed several different teams at Dropbox for five years before founding Octant in 2017. Octant Bio is a developer of synthetic technology used to improve health and treat disease.

Dover

Founder: Anvisha Pai
‍Dropbox Role: Product Manager
Capital Raised: $22.8M
Investors: Tiger Global Management
Stage: Series A

Anvisha was the Product Manager for core sharing and collaboration products at Dropbox before starting several companies. Dover, an end-to-end recruiting platform, was founded in 2019.

Gem

Founder: Steven Bartel
‍Dropbox Role: Engineering Manager
Capital Raised: $148M
Investors: Greylock
Stage: Series C

Steven is the co-founder of Gem, a recruiting platform that integrates with third-party applications such as LinkedIn, Gmail, and more.

WorkOS

Founder: Michael Grinch
‍Dropbox Role: Engineering
Capital Raised: $95M
Investors: Lightspeed Venture Partners
Stage: Series B

Michael founded two companies, one of them being WorkOS. WorkOS is a unified platform with modern APIs and SDKs for enterprise-ready features.

Nylas

Founder: Michael Grinch
‍Dropbox Role: Engineering
Capital Raised: $175M
Investors: Tiger Global Management
Stage: Series C

The other successful company Michael founded is Nylas, a CPaaS company that empowers businesses worldwide to unlock the power of their communications data.

Pilot

Founder: Jessica McKellar, Jeff Arnold
‍Dropbox Role: Director of Engineering, Head of Product
Capital Raised: $161M
Investors: Index Ventures
Stage: Series C

Pilot was founded by Jessica and Jeff, who both worked at Dropbox. Pilot was started in 2017 and offers bookkeeping, tax, and CFO services for growing businesses.

Lendtable

Founder: Mitchell Jones
‍Dropbox Role: Product Manager
Capital Raised: $24M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Series A

Mitchell worked as Product Manager at both Dropbox and Meta. In 2020 he was part of Y Combinator and founded Lendtable. Lendtable is a consumer financial services platform and provides income-constrained individuals with wealth-building cash advances.

Scratch

Founder: Sameh Elamawy
Dropbox Role: Product Manager
Capital Raised: $17.3M
Investors: Index Ventures
Stage: Seed

Sameh is the CEO of Scratch, which helps borrowers understand, manage, and pay back their loans.

Fly.io

Founder: Michael Dwan
Dropbox Role: Product Manager
Capital Raised: $40.5M
Investors: Andreessen Horowitz
Stage: Series B

Michael is the co-founder of Fly, a global JavaScript platform that gives users the power to build their own CDN.

Torch Technology

Founder: Drew Werner
‍Dropbox Role: Engineering Manager
Capital Raised: $32M
Investors: Felicis Ventures
Stage: Seed

Drew is the co-founder and CTO at Torch Technology, which develops an all-in-one technology designed to meet dental practices supply ordering and inventory management needs.

Pavilion

Founder: Alicia Chen
‍Dropbox Role: Head of Desktop Infrastructure
Capital Raised: $26M
Investors: Forerunner Ventures
Stage: Series A

Alicia worked at Dropbox for 5 years, and in 2019 she co-founded Pavilion, a marketplace for the $2T state and local procurement sector.

Common Room

Founder: Tom Kleinpeter
‍Dropbox Role: Principal Engineer
Capital Raised: $53M
Investors: Greylock
Stage: Series B

Common Room is an intelligent community-led growth platform that helps users deepen relationships, build better products, and drive impact.

Forethought

Founder: Deon Nicholas
‍Dropbox Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $92M
Investors: NEA
Stage: Series C

Forethought is a generative AI platform for customer support automation. Deon founded Forethought in 2017, after working as a Software Engineer at several well-known companies, including Dropbox.

Metronome

Founder: Kevin Liu
‍Dropbox Role: Enterprise Marketing
Capital Raised: $35M
Investors: Andreessen Horowitz
Stage: Series A

Kevin founded Metronome in 2019. The platform offers billing infrastructure to help software companies launch, iterate, and scale their usage-based business models.

Primer

Founder: Keith Putnam-Delaney
‍Dropbox Role: Marketing
Capital Raised: $12M
Investors: Craft Ventures
Stage: Series A

Keith founded Primer in 2019, a business to business marketing company offering marketing solutions.

Rising Stars

Quiltt

Founder: Mark Bechhofer
‍Dropbox Role: Enterprise Sales Executive
Capital Raised: $4M
Investors: Greycroft
Stage: Seed

After working at Dropbox, Mark co-founded Quiltt, a platform which allows anyone to launch modern consumer fintech experiences with no backend required.

Dayslice

Founder: Ishita Arora
‍Dropbox Role: Product Manager
Capital Raised: $6M
Investors: Upfront Ventures
Stage: Seed

Dayslice is a software startup providing virtual no-code storefronts for solopreneurs. Ishita worked as Product Manager at Dropbox between 2015 and 2017.

Scale3 Labs

Founder: Ola Muse
‍Dropbox Role: Director of Cloud Infrastructure
Capital Raised: $5.3M
Investors: Redpoint
Stage: Seed

Ola worked at Fastly, Dropbox and Coinbase before co-founding Scale3 Labs in 2022. Scale3 Labs is a web3 platform for monitoring and maintaining blockchain networks and nodes.

Haven

Founder: Aditya Acharya
‍Dropbox Role: Engineering Manager
Capital Raised: $13.5M
Investors: 8VC
Stage: Series A

Aditya is the co-founder and CTO of Haven, a technology and marketplace platform that unlocks homeowner engagement for mortgage servicers.

Opal

Founder: Stephen Cobbe
Dropbox Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $11.8M
Investors: Greylock
Stage: Series A

Stephen was a Software Engineer at Dropbox for 4 years before co-founding Opal in 2020. Opal helps enterprises to build access management workflows that scale.

Doola

Founder: Arjun Mahadevan
‍Dropbox Role: Product Manager
Capital Raised: $11M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Series A

Arjun worked at Dropbox for almost 3 years. He is now the co-founder of Doola, which helps founders launch a US company from anywhere in the world.

Teleport

Founder: Paul Bohm, Jon Choi
Dropbox Role: Senior Software Engineer & Product Engineer
Capital Raised: $9.9M
Investors: Foundation Capital
Stage: Seed

Both Paul and Jon worked at Dropbox (although at different times)! In 2019 they started Teleport, a web3 protocol for ridesharing that will be owned and governed by its drivers, passengers, and builders.