The Chinese version of Dropbox "Nut Cloud" and the team story behind it

(Fast-Path network column Lou Hao Chuan) Nut cloud is a Chinese storage service, formerly known as the "Nut Shop", provides free cloud space, similar to Dropbox, users can directly sync files to the nut cloud, for themselves and partners with any device access. Since the launch, almost all users have reflected that the product satisfies many of their needs, and the spirit behind the product and the team have what interesting story.

Today we interviewed two founders of the Nut cloud, as well as the creator of the Nut Cloud, Shanghao and CFRP confined:

Teambition: The nut Cloud and Dropbox are the most like, synchronization performance is very good, want to compare the biggest advantage of the nut cloud where?

Shanghao: Dropbox is also a tool to store personal data and can be synchronized, the biggest advantage of the nut cloud is that he provides users with the right to set multiple folders , users can install the nut cloud after the prompt to synchronize the original computer has a number of folders to other clients. This way, you'll be able to sync your files directly, without having to rearrange them as you would with Dropbox, or just a single folder like Dropbox.

Teambition: The role of the nut cloud is to synchronize files, so why don't we use the net to do this thing?

CFRP confined: The main is simple. For yourself, you don't have to manually upload and download files. For synchronization with work, synchronizing documents for the first time can improve productivity and avoid differences in understanding when communicating. Besides, you're going to have a lot of clients. Now, like an Android phone or iphone,ipad, the nut cloud can sync your files to different clients at the first time, and you can expand file sharing between different people. You can even directly sync the folder in the Apple Computer directly to the PC side of another Windows system, this is very cool, he solves the problem is that the network can not be solved, his cross-platform synchronization function can help people better work together, off-site office.

Teambition: What is the spirit of the nut cloud product?

Shanghao: The spirit behind it has two points, one is simple temperament, and the other is efficiency. we have done a very simple function, for example, we are more often in the provision of bricks, users want to use the line, and most of the domestic similar products are put this building blocks into a specific style, and then presented to the user. When we first design the product, we feel that we should leave some of the right to use it to the user. We did not kill the function of the folder, for example, we do not specifically specify a folder to put photos, the other must put the code, or to put the log. Because in our opinion, each person's personality is different, the demand is not the same, so we just provide the ability to synchronize the multiple folders (bricks), and not to specify what it should look like. The 2nd CFRP confined can introduce.

CFRP confined: Well, because we want to help the people or teams that need to store the work files, we've built multiple clients across platforms (IOS, Android, WP, Windows, MAC, Linux, etc.), plus a web version, plus a smart incremental backup, LAN synchronization, compression and other technical means to speed up the synchronization of documents , which can greatly improve people's efficiency. We want to do one thing to help the work, and not just upload some photos, phone address book, songs, such as popular, entertainment products. As a person of technical origin, we are more advocating efficiency.

Teambition: Is the NUT Cloud team an early group of people in what industry?

Shanghao: Our founders are mostly Han Zhu, CFRP confined and I, all of them technical backgrounds, which also makes us more focused on our products. Because our products involve the storage of personal files, we think it is important to use good technology to protect this data and speed up data synchronization.

Teambition: How did early team members get to know each other?

Shanghao: Early team except me and CFRP confined, and Han Zhu. He was the initiator of the nut cloud, but he didn't come today. At school, I went to a major IT company internship, Han Zhu is my mentor, he is in large-scale data storage and low-level system building has been very successful and very persistent in entrepreneurship. I was fascinated by his skill and charisma, so it was natural to start a business after leaving school.

CFRP confined: I and Han Zhu very early met, before in the university is the same bedroom, and is a fellow, so at the time of the university at the same time did a lot of projects.

Teambition: Now the NUT Cloud team are full-time people? Do you have interns? How do you attract talent?

Shanghao: In addition to the full-time staff have some interns, and our interns are very strong, including a KT, Fudan, many times won the National ACM Competition Gold Medal. I think the most important thing is that our technical team is generally very strong, like these interns actually do not pay attention, they will prefer the atmosphere we respect, focus on technology, we are actually working to create a better atmosphere to let them learn more things, but also hope that they can stay.

Teambition: Will the team use their products in the process of making the products?

Shanghao: This is a must, we have a principle, called "eat their own dog food", the initial start-up due to the limited funds and energy to obtain a large number of market data to feed back the user's ideas, so earlier in the early days we have to prototype, and then put ourselves as the product of the hardcore users, In the process of use to find out what the problem, and then improve. So our iterations are very frequent and there are iterations every week, so the development is more agile.

Teambition: What friends are in the cloud with nuts?

Shanghao: All in use, and what industry is there, to give a typical example, I went to school tutor is teaching software engineering, he let all the students to install the NUT cloud, students usually use it to upload homework. Our product is a minimalist route, just as we have just said to let users build their own bricks.

CFRP confined: Yes, and the nut cloud very humane point is that it leaves the read and write permissions to the user to decide, just like the teacher, the teacher's Nut Cloud folder is able to set their own access rights, his folder there are many students work, in order to prevent plagiarism, He set a certain permission so that students can only upload folders but not to read the files uploaded by other students. Because of this, the teacher has now completely replaced the nut cloud with their original FTP.

Teambition: What is your business model?

CFRP confined: In order to create a secure environment, we insist on not advertising (advertising is the need to analyze user data, but we do not want to do so), so there is only a paid premium version of the business model. We will have free version, professional version and Team Edition, Professional Edition, team version will charge a certain fee, mainly to consider the user experience, so first let the user decide the good is not required to pay. Speaking of this, our user feedback has a very interesting phenomenon, there are a lot of users do not care about your professional version of what features, they look at your brand think you are reliable when you will think: "This company's products can also, support, bought." " so again, we spend more of our experience on the product to make the user feel that the nut cloud is more efficient for storing files ."

Teambition: I see a space growth program on your official website that has a "monthly payment of 1GB space that users will receive in a monthly renewal." This model is very interesting, why do you think of such a creative renewal method?

Shanghao: We think so, the user with his experience, the increase in data storage is very normal thing, also shows that users in the use of our products have developed a good habit of storage management files, which is what we want to see, everyone in the work more standardized, more effective rate. So as the user grows we will send space.

Teambition: How did your team get the idea of a nut cloud?

Shanghao: Han Zhu He was in the world's top IT companies to do the underlying technology, regardless of the industry or technology are very insightful and experience, and then always have the dream of entrepreneurship, and we were very excited when we saw Dropbox, but it insisted that not supporting multiple sync folders makes us feel very confused , So I think China should also have a useful similar tool, so he discussed with him to do this. That's the idea.

Teambition: What is the core culture of the nut cloud?

Shanghao: Like our team spirit, we focus on "efficiency, safety, simplicity", and we inject this culture into the product experience.

Teambition: Since you're talking about safety, I'd like to ask, how does the nut cloud protect the user's data?

Shanghao: This is a barrier to our technology, in addition to cross-platform, we also use the same technology as net silver to encrypt communications , using the same as the military AES algorithm for data encryption storage. Your files will be cut into multiple file blocks before leaving your computer and encrypted with HTTPS to different servers in the cloud. Even we can't see the user's specific information, because there are two layers of encryption technology, and information advantage fragmented storage in different places of the server.

Teambition: How long has this product been done?

CFRP confined: For two years, it was on the line this March.

Teambition: Does the next step continue with the development or the new release schedule?

CFRP confined: We actually have a new version every week, and we ask our friends what the results are like, have been watching their feedback, and now all the clients are online. In addition, there is a team version is just on-line, perhaps this will make the user and your future teambition use, the nut cloud is used to share files, we are in sync with the team's final small product (file form), and you are focused on this process before, Synchronize information, task progress, and so on when sharing a team's internal collaboration.

Teambition: Yes, you've summed it up in place. We pay great attention to the process of team collaboration follow up. Does your team work together at the same time? Can you share your biggest difficulties in this process? What is the solution?

Shanghao: We were in fact Home Office earlier, Soho, that time communication is a more difficult thing, then there is no team collaboration platform, only e-mail, IM (instant messaging) tools, telephone this way of communication, in these ways, our favorite is the mail. The main reason is that software development is a brain-intensive task, and once interrupted, it's hard to refocus. messages can be postponed to avoid interfering with other partners who are concentrating on their work. We only use IM tools when it's more urgent, and we only use voice tools to communicate if we don't have a definite or brainstorming topic. After concentrating, we still believe that it is beneficial to improve efficiency by communicating with the email and reducing the interference with the partners, even though it may be quicker to communicate in person.

Teambition: Are you Soho office or is it quite interesting, is it not very tempting? Because there is a big bed over there at home.

Shanghao: Haha, yes, but we are basically very conscious, in fact, I think it is because we are very interested in the server, storage technology , although not to the Silicon Valley their startup to write the product of the state of the night, But basically we are very focused on the job at hand.

CFRP confined: Yes, and in the process of cooperation, we have been sharing their knowledge with each other, but also often prompted to become a technical generalist, the actual technology is a lot of mastery , writing web-side can also go to write iOS, of course, the premise is to take care of their piece first . Every member of the team grows fast, so the bed that you're talking about is less attractive to us later.

Teambition: How did you solve the problem in your team when there was an argument?

Shanghao: We have an easy rule. That is, if you cannot reach a conclusion at a limited time, choose the one that is easiest to implement. This allows the user to feel the vitality of a startup and also helps to gather the most compelling user feedback in the first time. In addition, we find that over-argument is easy to create details and trivial, completely ignoring the user's intuitive experience. The easy-to-use rule is more likely to reflect the user's needs.

Teambition: How do you review the results of your work?

CFRP confined: Our experience is that code review can effectively compensate for the lack of code test coverage. we ask everyone to do review before submitting the work, and all the code also invites other partners to review. Specifically, we use the Code hosting service BitBucket, where each member has a fork in the skeleton code and must be review with the difference fork and pull request functionality before committing the code. In addition, this ensures that at least two people can understand any aspect of the product, and can respond quickly and keep the team healthy even in some unexpected situations.

Conclusion:

We are very grateful to the nut cloud team for their time to receive our interview, today they share a lot of dry goods, but also hope that they can in the future to build the product so well, so that more people enjoy the fun and convenience of file synchronization, but also wish their team to better development, the spirit of the team to continue to inject the middle of the product, Is that more users feel "safe, simple, efficient".

This article is for Teambition (team collaboration Platform Development Group) exclusive report, transferred from Teambition official blog (teambition Code): http://blog.teambition.com/archives/2012/07/909.html

The Chinese version of Dropbox "Nut Cloud" and the team story behind it