Aaron Levie quotes

Aaron Levie

"My co-founder Dylan Smith and I left our junior year of college to move to the Bay Area. To the horror of our friends' parents, we actually had two other friends drop out of college to work on the product. The four of us were just working non-stop growing Box."
Aaron Levie
Work Parents Product Us
"The business models in enterprise have changed pretty dramatically. A huge problem with enterprise software traditionally has been usually you sell to the customer and then they adopt the technology. The great thing about 'freemium' and the new way enterprise software is being sold is you get to try it first and then buy it."
Aaron Levie
You Technology Great Business
"There's a lot of pride that business owners have. It's actually really critical that pride and ownership extends to everyone in the organization. I think of everyone is in the same boat in driving the company forward."
Aaron Levie
Business Boat Pride Organization
"If you're in your early 20s and you're hanging out with a bunch of other people in their early 20s, nobody has a sense of the kinds of problems that real 'workers' run into every day. They're running into a completely different set of problems like 'What's the party going on right now that I should be going to?'"
Aaron Levie
You People Day Problems
"My workday begins around 11 A.M., with a cup of black coffee in each hand. If I had more hands, there would be more coffee."
Aaron Levie
Coffee Black Hands More
"I have a lot of faults. I often interrupt in meetings. I talk too loud. I talk too fast."
Aaron Levie
Meetings Fast Interrupt Talk
"My mom is proud of me. But she might not be too happy about the hours I keep or how little I eat. I wake up so late that it would be inappropriate to have breakfast. At most, I will have a snack in the day and dinner. I realize that it's not the healthiest way to live, but it's all I really have time for."
Aaron Levie
Me Time Day Breakfast
"My downtime tends to resemble my uptime. Weekends are workdays, but toned down. Over the whole weekend, I may have five meetings, as opposed to six on a weekday. I used to play piano for 30 minutes at night, but I had to pull that out of my schedule. I don't have time for nonwork stuff."
Aaron Levie
Time Night Meetings Down
"If you think about the market that we're in, and more broadly just the enterprise software market, the kind of transition that's happening right now from legacy systems to the cloud is literally, by definition, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
Aaron Levie
You Opportunity Think More
"All of a sudden, if you think about the entire ecosystem of connected devices that can pull down information, access content and allow me to share and work and communicate, the vast majority now are not Windows computers. They are iPhones. They are iPads. They are Android devices."
Aaron Levie
Work Me You Computers
"The dynamic with social is you tend not to have products with 30% market share. It's all or nothing. Email works because we have open standards that let you communicate across any email client."
Aaron Levie
You Nothing Open Email
"Steve Jobs is the most epic entrepreneur of all time. He served as a guiding light for any emerging businessperson who wanted to learn how things should get done. He'll be looked at as one of the best business leaders of all time, and certainly one of the best tech entrepreneurs."
Aaron Levie
Best Business Time Light
"I think people are always able to achieve more than they think they can. While that's cliche, I don't know if managers think about that enough. You have to set your sights extremely high."
Aaron Levie
You People Always Enough
"I think bad politics are incredibly dangerous, so it's important to make sure that people are communicating well. Culture and morale are super important. It's best to not force it, but let it happen organically and genuinely."
Aaron Levie
Best Politics Culture People
"I'm certainly not into money and prestige. For me there is simply nothing more exciting than people involved in the creation of great products. That is what drives me."
Aaron Levie
Me Great People Money
"I think I'm the kind of person who would be very difficult to employ - I'm pretty annoying, but driven."
Aaron Levie
Difficult Person Think Who
"I interned at Miramax and subsequently at Paramount because I was really curious about the future of entertainment - how were we going to get films online? While the inspiration for Box didn't come from that experience directly, it was very obvious that bigger businesses had a lot of slow processes and cumbersome technology."
Aaron Levie
Experience Future Technology Curious
"My acronym is WWSJD: What Would Steve Jobs Do?"
Aaron Levie
Would Steve Jobs Jobs Steve
"What happens to the Microsofts, Oracles and IBMs of the world is that when they get big enough, they don't think they need to bring that same level of focus and energy to the end-user experience."
Aaron Levie
Experience World Focus Energy
"It's not accidental that products get worse over time; it's because companies stop paying attention to them. They stop caring as much about maintaining the same quality they did when they were just trying to fight for survival and no one would pay attention unless they had the best technology."
Aaron Levie
Best Technology Time Fight
"I tend to not discriminate when it comes to people I can learn from. Basically, if someone has built a meaningful business in software, technology or media, faced disruption and adversity, and overcame underdog status, I want to know how they did it."
Aaron Levie
Technology Adversity Business People
"It's unfortunate biologically we have to sleep."
Aaron Levie
Sleep Unfortunate Biologically
"Execute like there's no tomorrow, strategize like there will be."
Aaron Levie
Entrepreneur Tomorrow
"Execute like there's no tomorrow, strategize like there will be."
Aaron Levie
Entrepreneur Tomorrow
"Startups often win because it's easier to see what comes next when you don't have to worry about maintaining what came last."
Aaron Levie
Winning Worry Lasts
"Opportunity lives at the intersection of what people need tomorrow and can be just barely built today."
Aaron Levie
Opportunity People Needs
"The product that wins is the one that bridges customers to the future, not the one that requires a giant leap."
Aaron Levie
Winning Bridges Giants
"Better to be too early and have to try again, than be too late and have to catch up."
Aaron Levie
Trying Too Late Late
"We're going from a world of customized software to standardized platforms."
Aaron Levie
World Building Platforms
"I think people are always able to achieve more than they think they can. While that’s cliche, I don’t know if managers think about that enough. You have to set your sights extremely high."
Aaron Levie
Thinking Sight People
"I have a lot of faults. I often interrupt in meetings. I talk too loud. I talk too fast."
Aaron Levie
Faults Loud Meetings
"Companies have never won. You're always either fighting for survival, or fighting for relevance."
Aaron Levie
Fighting Entrepreneur Survival
"That's already been tried before only means the first attempt got it wrong."
Aaron Levie
Mean Firsts
"What happens to the Microsofts, Oracles and IBMs of the world is that when they get big enough, they don't think they need to bring that same level of focus and energy to the end-user experience."
Aaron Levie
Thinking Focus Energy
"Start with something simple and small, then expand over time. If people call it a 'toy' you're definitely onto something."
Aaron Levie
Simple People Toys
"The chance of failure is almost always better than the guarantee of never knowing."
Aaron Levie
Knowing Guarantees Chance
"There's a lot of pride that business owners have. It's actually really critical that pride and ownership extends to everyone in the organization. I think of everyone is in the same boat in driving the company forward."
Aaron Levie
Pride Thinking Organization
"Your product should sell itself, but that does not mean you don't need salespeople."
Aaron Levie
Mean Doe Needs
"If you're waiting for encouragement from others, you're doing it wrong. By the time people think an idea is good, it's probably too late."
Aaron Levie
Encouragement Thinking Ideas
"Too little process and you can't get good work done. Too much process and you can't get any work done. Most companies never find the middle."
Aaron Levie
Done Littles Too Much
"Tip: Take the stodgiest, oldest, slowest moving industry you can find. And build amazing software for it."
Aaron Levie
Moving Software Industry
"Innovation is hard because solving problems people didn't know they had & building something no one needs look identical at first."
Aaron Levie
People Innovation Needs
"My workday begins around 11 A.M., with a cup of black coffee in each hand. If I had more hands, there would be more coffee."
Aaron Levie
Coffee Hands Black
"Look for new enabling technologies that create a wide gap between how things have been done and how they can be done."
Aaron Levie
Technology Looks Done
"Focus too much on the near-term and you won't get tomorrow's customers, focus too much on the long-term and you won't get today's."
Aaron Levie
Long Focus Today
"You can look at the cost structure of an incumbent company and discover: where are they not going to be able to drop their prices... because that business model is fundamental to the existence of the company."
Aaron Levie
Looks Cost Fundamentals
"You want to find the really crazy but still somewhat reasonable outliers within the customer ecosystem."
Aaron Levie
Crazy Ecosystems Want
"My mom is proud of me. But she might not be too happy about the hours I keep or how little I eat. I wake up so late that it would be inappropriate to have breakfast. At most, I will have a snack in the day and dinner. I realize that it's not the healthiest way to live, but it's all I really have time for."
Aaron Levie
Mom Snacks Would Be
"It's unfortunate biologically we have to sleep."
Aaron Levie
Sleep Unfortunate

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