Dropbox founder Drew Houston explained that the idea for his file sharing company came out of a mistake he made and a ride on a Chinatown bus.
Houston spoke to Business Insider about his life before Dropbox, which involved using a thumb drive for storage and emailing himself files.
“I was going from Boston to New York on the Chinatown bus, forgot my thumb drive, and I was so frustrated—really with myself, because this kept happening,” Houston told Business Insider. “And I’m like, my God, I never want to have this problem again. And I opened up the editor and started writing some code. I had no idea what it would become. But those were the beginnings.”
Houston went on to found Dropbox with fellow MIT student Arash Ferdowsi in 2007.