Dropbox Chief to Join Elite Ranks of Idea-to-I.P.O. Founders<br />students,” said Kyle Vogt, 32, chief executive of the self-driving car company Cruise Automation, who met Mr. Houston at an M. I.T.<br />But according to interviews with more than a dozen people, Mr. Houston — a private man with a love of 1990s rock<br />and business books — built his company with an easygoing management style and a dry sense of humor, which helped him deal with the bumps along the way.<br />Running Dropbox, Mr. Houston was at first determined to aim its product — which lets people store<br />and access their files in the cloud — at consumers rather than businesses.<br />Dropbox, which is based in San Francisco, is unprofitable, and Mr. Houston now has to navigate through a challenging time, both guiding his company around the tech giants<br />that are squeezing into its space and adapting his frat guy persona to a changing culture.<br />“The default back then was to stay in Boston or go to New York and work for a hedge fund.”<br />In 2007, Mr. Houston entered Dropbox into the Boston program of Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley start-up incubator.<br />Last month, Dropbox filed to go public, and when it does Mr. Houston will become the newest<br />member of a small club of tech founders who steered a start-up all the way to Wall Street.<br />Whether Mr. Houston successfully takes Dropbox public will be closely watched, with other<br />privately held tech companies like Uber and Airbnb also edging toward an I. P.O.
