Dropbox has this online writing app called Paper that’s so beautiful that sometimes I just open it and tap out a few lines in order to appreciate looking at a screen that doesn’t crowd words with images, ads or notifications. Paper evokes typing on an actual piece of paper (yes, I have actually typed on real paper). It’s a pleasure to use, and that’s no accident.
Dropbox knows that it’s not enough for software to work anymore. Digital products have to work nicely. Dropbox built Paper to foster collaboration, as a sort of project dashboard, where different members of a team could post updates, screenshots and spreadsheets to keep collaborators in the loop on the way to their deadline.
Paper as a product crystallizes what’s best about Dropbox’s enterprise offerings, which is largely how it makes money. Dropbox could hit annualized revenue of a billion dollars per year in 2017. It hopes to accelerate growth by building more applications on top of its basic storage offering (probably similar to Google Docs and Slack).
