I've been using Claude Code regularly since the 4.5 release, and 4.7 was a significant regression: very unreliable, arguing about changes, deciding that fixes weren't needed, etc.
I'm hoping they recreate the magic of 4.5 but it's as much about the quality of harness, the memory and efficiency of the tools than simply the models at this point.
Dropbox failed to find a second act: they struggled to find PMF with their acquisitions and new products: Dropbox Passwords, Dropbox Paper, Carousel etc.
As Steve Jobs warned Drew Houston, Dropbox was "a feature, not a product"
It's a great product. They had the brand, the capital, and the user base to become what Slack, Zoom, or Notion became. Instead, they spent a decade fighting a losing battle over storage pricing with Google and Microsoft. Their lack of a second act is due to a failure of product vision and enterprise execution.
And they had Paper, which was an excellent product (I was at Dropbox a decade ago; we all used Paper constantly and it was great) very close to what Notion later became. They never got it over the hump to wider PMF — like you say, a failure of product and of enterprise execution.
(Given that it was so close to Notion, I think Paper is one area where the product vision was on to something good; but they didn't succeed at product execution, connecting customer feedback to iterating correctly on product improvements.)
Never worked at Dropbox, but I absolutely loved Paper.
The problem at Dropbox seems to have been that there was no cohesiveness to all the products. Paper, Passwords, Sign, all seem to have never been truly integrated into a single experience. Each one felt like it was trying to have its own identity.
Yeah, when signing into Paper it always felt pretty silly how the auth flow was all like "are you sure you want to share your Dropbox account info with this Paper thing?" as if it was some third-party service.
Ironically, just within the last year Paper has gotten much more integrated into Dropbox as a single UX. And… it's significantly worse: slower, clumsier, harder to navigate. (I don't think there's any inherent reason those had to be correlated; it's just that Paper has clearly been destaffed a lot in recent years, so naturally any new changes will tend to be less polished.)
Another issue: Paper was tied to your Dropbox account.
From Dropbox's perspective, this sounds great. Accounts become more useful and valuable. The addressable market of a Dropbox account grows! Plus, everyone has a Dropbox account already, right?
Unfortunately, it turns out that business customers generally don't deploy Dropbox wall-to-wall. It's expensive. Not all employees need file sync.
A Dropbox account ends up being an obstacle to adoption.
And a distraction: a common account creates an irresistible urge to spend a lot of time finding ways to tie this new product into the old one.
I'm not sure I ultimately buy that Dropbox is expensive - for one thing, Notion now charges basically the same as Dropbox, and you don't even get file sync in the deal.
I can definitely believe that that was an objection customers had, though. I just suspect that what it really meant was another way of expressing that there wasn't PMF - if the PMF were there, they'd have willingly paid, just like they do now for Notion or Slab or what have you.
And yeah, there was definitely some energy going into trying to tie the products together more (putting Paper docs in your Dropbox folders) - and when that finally shipped it sadly made the Paper experience worse, not better.
I don't see the need to become bloated like slack and a one size fits all application. They do a great job with the product they have. Is there anything wrong with just being what you are? Why does the lack of a second act need to be a bad thing if your first product is great and still extremely valuable?
I would also if anything put Zoom in with Dropbox, they have a product that is by far the most enjoyable to use in that space, but any other offshoot is not worth it.
Teams being free doesn't make teams good. Just like Google Drive and OneDrive being packaged in for cheap doesn't make them good. It is clear why they are lower value.
> They had the brand, the capital, and the user base to become what Slack, Zoom, or Notion became. Instead, they spent a decade fighting a losing battle over storage pricing with Google and Microsoft
Is the alternative not likely that they would have spent a decade fighting a losing battle over office software with Google and Microsoft? Paper was a great product but the big guys have vertical integration so companies prefer their end-to-end solutions (GSuite etc) and I don't see how Dropbox could have easily overcome that.
> Is the alternative not likely that they would have spent a decade fighting a losing battle over office software with Google and Microsoft? Paper was a great product but the big guys have vertical integration so companies prefer their end-to-end solutions (GSuite etc) and I don't see how Dropbox could have easily overcome that.
Slack, Zoom, and Notion all argue against that. Yes, they have to compete against Google and Microsoft's integrated solutions, but they're good enough that they have held their own. Of course they would be bigger if Google and Microsoft didn't have such products.
Every generation of builders believed their tools defined their value. Then the tools got easier, faster, automated, and the definition had to change.
But programming didn’t disappear. Writing didn’t disappear. Designing didn’t disappear.
AI flips the equation: when creation becomes cheap, value shifts from how much you can produce to what changes because you showed up. The ability to have a positive impact has actually expanded.
I don’t think this whole thing had anything to do with AI or not. It has to do with ‘teaching kids in a gym’ or ‘sitting in front of a screen in an office’.
“Every generation of builders believed their tools defined their value.”
People anchor identity to the hardest part of their work.
• Assembly → craftsmanship
• Hand coding → engineering skill
• Complex stacks → seniority
• Writing longform → intellectual authority
The difficulty of the tool becomes proof of worth.
“If few people can do this, then my contribution matters.”
So value feels intrinsic to the technical act itself.
⸻
“Then the tools got easier, faster, automated, and the definition had to change.”
Historically, this always happens.
Compilers replaced assembly expertise.
Frameworks replaced boilerplate knowledge.
Cloud replaced infrastructure mastery.
AI replaces a lot of implementation effort.
Each time, people initially interpret it as:
the skill is dying
But what actually dies is the old measurement of importance.
Value moves up a level:
from execution → judgment → direction → taste → responsibility
The activities persist, what changes is why they matter.
You still code, but code is no longer scarce.
You still write, but writing is no longer the bottleneck.
You still design, but layout isn’t the achievement.
The work shifts from producing artifacts to choosing which artifacts deserve to exist.
⸻
“AI flips the equation: when creation becomes cheap, value shifts from how much you can produce to what changes because you showed up.”
This is the core claim.
Old model:
effort → output → value
New model:
judgment → outcome → value
Previously you proved worth by volume, speed, or complexity.
Now production is abundant, so the scarce thing is:
causal impact
Not:
Did you make something?
But:
Did reality change because you were involved?
You’re moving from manufacturing to intervention.
⸻
“The ability to have a positive impact has actually expanded.”
So the post ends optimistic.
AI doesn’t reduce agency, it removes the cost barrier to acting.
Before:
You needed a team, funding, or org permission to affect the world.
Now:
A single person can teach, fix, organize, build tools, or help communities directly.
Meaning shifts from scale (reach) to consequence (effect).
⸻
In one sentence
The post argues that AI doesn’t eliminate human contribution, it removes technical scarcity, forcing value to relocate from producing things to changing outcomes.
There's still huge gaps in our understanding: quantum gravity, dark matter, what happens before planck time, thermodynamics of life and many others.
Part of the problem is that building bigger colliders, telescopes, and gravitational wave detectors requires huge resources and very powerful computers to store and crunch all the data.
We're cutting research instead of funding it right now and sending our brightest researchers to Europe and China...
Gravity is coming back to Silicon Valley: workers are realizing that the Bell Labs image they were sold was mostly innovation theater and hoarding talent for websites overstuffed with ads designed to manipulate users into buying junk
It's good for YC to do this and will benefit every startup in the long run. Google has been one of the sources of the AI boom, and provides liquidity by acquiring startups. But as YC argues they've monopolised distribution channels to the point where you need to go through the Google toll booth every time you want to access the market. This tax on founders to reach their audience makes many types of businesses unsustainable and impossible, especially for products where usage != sharing.
You mean kills potentially successful tech companies of the future by acquiring startups to cement their dominance.
I get why people on this site are in love with the idea of building an unsustainable, money-losing business where the only path to success is being acquired by a tech giant. It's like winning the lottery! But it helps nobody, it hurts your customers/users, and it hurts innovation. It's also stupid, as a successful tech company could potentially grow as big as the giants you're courting (ESPECIALLY now that the FTC has started finally doing its job). Why else do you think they're spending so much money to acquire you? It's easier on the ego to call it an "acquihire", but the truth is that they're just paying a maintenance tax on their monopoly.
Every time people complain about how detrimental big tech is to society, it ultimately comes down to this sad strategy.
Of course it is good for YC to do this. They have significant investments in OpenAI both directly and indirectly through the countless startups they've funded whose core is OpenAI.
And it's ridiculous to act like (a) you are forced to go through Google to access the 'market' and (b) that this is somehow unusual or untoward. They are an advertising company and not the only one.
The decision can be read in the larger political context. There was some controversy a while back on certain directions the Foundation took like the project on sanitation (aka the toilet challenge) and the backing of charter schools. Regardless of one's opinion of those, he is taking a stand and drawing a line in the sand.
I'm hoping they recreate the magic of 4.5 but it's as much about the quality of harness, the memory and efficiency of the tools than simply the models at this point.
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