They didn't have funding (other than YC, which at the time was $6k/founder, not nearly enough to support an employee) until right before they hired Aston.
Drew had approached me about being employee #2 for DropBox, and I had lunch with him, Arash, and Aston in Feb 2008. They'd only closed the Sequoia seed round about a month before. IIUC, Aston had been officially hired the day before. I (stupidly in hindsight, but for good reasons at the time) ended up declining. I actually reconsidered about two months later and asked if the position was still open, but they had long since filled it - I think they got some very good MIT grads literally later the afternoon after I had declined.
So they were hiring very aggressively, but they started recruiting before they were in a position to actually hire, to warm up potential employees.
Drew had approached me about being employee #2 for DropBox, and I had lunch with him, Arash, and Aston in Feb 2008. They'd only closed the Sequoia seed round about a month before. IIUC, Aston had been officially hired the day before. I (stupidly in hindsight, but for good reasons at the time) ended up declining. I actually reconsidered about two months later and asked if the position was still open, but they had long since filled it - I think they got some very good MIT grads literally later the afternoon after I had declined.
So they were hiring very aggressively, but they started recruiting before they were in a position to actually hire, to warm up potential employees.