Dropbox Kills Passwords

Plus: Figma’s Payday; ChatGPT’s No-Answer Mode

Author

Joey Padgett
July 31, 2025

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Hey people!

Welcome back to Forests Over Trees, your tech strategy newsletter. It’s time to zoom-out, connect dots, and (try to) predict the future.

A quick thank you to this week’s partners:

  • Flippa — the easiest way to buy or sell an online business

  • Reclaimai — an AI calendar that protects your time

  • Softr — create no-code apps on top of your data

Also, I’ll be traveling on vacation next week, so expect to see Forests Over Trees back in your inbox the week after! Hope everyone’s having a great summer.

Dropbox Kills Passwords

Plus: Figma’s Payday; ChatGPT’s No-Answer Mode

⚡ Tech News Takes ⚡
(4 stories)

  • What’s up: Figma priced its IPO at $33 per share, above the expected range, raising $1.2 billion.

    • The pricing values the company at $19.3 billion — just under the $20 billion Adobe deal that regulators blocked in 2023.

    • Figma’s quarterly revenue rose 40% YoY to ~$248 million, with near-breakeven operating margins.

  • So what: After Adobe tried and failed to acquire them back in 2022 (which we covered!), it’s good to see Figma finally get a payday. Plus, with the IPO instead of the buyout, they can continue to participate in the upside. But all investors/startups should be pumped, because successful IPOs mean investors get paid, have more capital to invest, get more deals done, encourage founders to take bigger swings, etc.

  • What’s up: Dropbox is shutting down its password manager October 28.

    • Dropbox cited a focus on "core product" features, and directed users to try 1Password instead.

  • So what: This is a smart move. We’ve written before about how focus is critical to making a company competitive. It gives you a speed advantage, and it lets you put your best people on the most important thing. Dropbox has been struggling to compete (slowing growth, losing marketshare, etc.). And they laid off 20% of their staff in October 2024 to get to a flatter, faster org. Dropping the password business lets them spend more time innovating on the core product, including in AI. Case in point — in June they announced a partnership with OpenAI, letting users connect to and query their Dropbox data.

  • What’s up: OpenAI launched “Study Mode” to help students build critical thinking by asking questions instead of just giving answers.

    • The feature is rolling out to Free, Plus, Pro, and Team plans now; Edu plans will follow in coming weeks.

    • There are no admin locks (yet) — students can still switch to regular ChatGPT if they want answers.

  • So what: This is pretty cool. And it was a good reminder to me that the Edu plan even exists! They have other features uniquely tailored to education — connecting to an LMS, seeing usage at the department and student level, setting budget limits, etc. Seems like a ton of value for students and faculty here (for the students and faculty willing and able to embrace it).

  • What’s up: St. Paul declared a shutdown of city systems after a “coordinated digital attack,” prompting the National Guard’s cyber unit to respond.

    • The incident disrupted libraries, WiFi, and other public services; the FBI and two private firms are assisting.

    • Officials haven’t disclosed the attack’s specifics, but the symptoms align with a ransomware-style breach.

  • So what: Nobody is safe from ransomware, it seems. And while it’s comforting to know there’s a cyber unit of the National Guard that can be dropped in, it’s concerning that the best anyone can do is a reactive approach. I hope we see innovation in cybersecurity to tame the digital wild west.

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