Drew Houston says as a kid “I always dreamed of having my own company.”
Well, not only did his dream come true, but now at 35 years old Houston is Co-Founder and CEO of Dropbox that is valued at more than $12 billion.
The popular digital file-cabinet company just sold its shares to the public. It listed on the Nasdaq (DBX) last week and Houston’s personal net worth shot up into the billions.
Houston started Dropbox in 2007 with his MIT classmate, Arash Ferdowsi. They were both in their 20’s and didn’t know much about business, let alone how to run a company back then. As Houston puts it, “we were just getting the company off the ground and coding in a little room.”
An avid reader, Houston eventually turned to business books to learn about leading a company. Books by Andy Grove, the CEO of Intel and one of Silicon Valley’s iconic entrepreneurs, were his favorites. “I really admire everything that he did,” Houston gushes.
As he looks to the future, Houston has big plans on expanding Dropbox into selling business software to large enterprise businesses. He’s also talking more like a leader of a public company.
“A big part of my job is helping everybody to stay focused on what I call our inner scorecard,” he says, adding that he can’t control the markets or Dropbox’s stock price. “What we can control is ‘are you building great products. Are your customers happy.’ If we take care of our inner scorecard, the outer scorecard will take care of itself.”
Watch the video above for more from our interview with Houston.