Arash Ferdowsi

Cove was progressing quite well.

And essentially then Drew and Arash, who were the two co-founders of Dropbox, decided like, "Hey, guys, do you wanna join forces? Dropbox is also being used to essentially improve collaboration.

Our north stars are very similar, so, uh, why don't we join forces?" They bought our company.

After the acquisition, I was, uh, the chief technology officer there.

[upbeat music] There was one moment when we were trying to sell NBCUniversal at Dropbox when my champion and executive sponsor, his name is Lenny Bloom, he was the VP of Identity and Collaboration at NBC.

After a day of doing vision talks, having him meet with our founders, Drew and Arash, I was escorting him out of the Dropbox building.

And remember, our main competitor was Box, and they had recently closed a, a deal with General Electric, and I think they were marketing that deal as having sold over 100,000 licenses.

So this was a big, big deal.

I saw a lot of companies coming out of MIT, uh, and people going on to their own entrepreneurial journey.

So the founders of Dropbox, Drew and Arash, were a few years before me at MIT.

Uh, there was a few other companies that had come out of MIT in the years before and I'm like, "They're capable of building a company.

There's no reason I can't figure it out even though I've never worked before and I'm just a young college graduate, uh, coming outta school for the first time.