I get this question a lot when I tell people what OfficeDrop is. Like most business ideas, the idea for OfficeDrop was born out of a personal need. Well, here is the story behind OfficeDrop:
After starting four companies, I went back to Wharton Business School to get an MBA in 2005. After I wrote my last exam in April 2007, I looked at 8000 pages of bulk packs and course notes and asked myself if there is a way I can keep those without having to carry them everywhere I moved. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense to digitize all documents and carry just the Adobe PDF versions of the paper. There would be be no need for paper anymore and I can find any article, business case or class note, just by searching the documents using keywords.
After some research, I bought a high-end scanner for $800 and spent two weeks scanning all these pages. I also converted these pages into searchable PDFS similar to what OfficeDrop offers today. Even though it was a painful and a time-consuming process, it was well worth it. I refer to these documents all the time just by searching on the keywords in the documents. I have classmates calling me asking if I could share my digital versions with them. Of course, I only share them with those people who took the classes with me - just to be sure I am not violating any copyrights.
After I moved back to Boston I started performing due diligence on four of my ideas including that of OfficeDrop. The more I talked to people about OfficeDrop, the more I heard from people how much they liked it and how they wish they could use such a service. I called our part-time accountant and asked her what she does with all our documents after they are processed. She responded by saying that she stores them in her basement along with her 49 other clients documents in boxes. When I mentioned the idea to her, she was excited. This were her words: “With this idea, my clients can access their documents whenever and from wherever they want. I do not need to go looking for them anymore. This would be a huge time and money saver”. Having the customer validation, I decided to put together a team and pursue OfficeDrop.
I spoke to Anand Rajaram and Vikram Kumar (my partners in OfficeDrop) who were running jPeople (my previous startup) about what they thought about the idea. They loved the idea and they told me they could relate to the problem. Vikram is the super-organizer and Anand like me is a wannabe-organizer. All of us spend time either organizing documents into folders or in finding documents when needing them.
I asked Anand and Vikram if they are willing to join me full-time in making OfficeDrop a reality and bring paper to life. After some deliberation they said yes and in August of 2007 we founded OfficeDrop and like they say: the rest is history.
