Aaron Levie
My dad is a chemical engineer, and my mom was a teacher. They were pretty serious about education, but I always thought about things a little bit differently.Collection: Education
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.Collection: Technology
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.Collection: Mom
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.Collection: Computers
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.Collection: Technology
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.Collection: Technology
Execute like there's no tomorrow, strategize like there will be.Collection: Entrepreneur
Startups often win because it's easier to see what comes next when you don't have to worry about maintaining what came last.Collection: Winning
Opportunity lives at the intersection of what people need tomorrow and can be just barely built today.Collection: Opportunity
The product that wins is the one that bridges customers to the future, not the one that requires a giant leap.Collection: Winning
You'll learn more in a day talking to customers than a week of brainstorming, a month of watching competitors, or a year of market research.Collection: Talking
Start with the assumption that the best way to do something is not the way it's being done right now.Collection: Done
Better to be too early and have to try again, than be too late and have to catch up.Collection: Trying
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.Collection: Done
If people don't think the odds are against you, you're doing it wrong.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Thinking
The only way to avoid disruption is to constantly do what you would if you were just starting out.Collection: Starting Out
That's already been tried before only means the first attempt got it wrong.Collection: Mean
Every single industry is going through a major business model and technology oriented disruption.Collection: Technology
Look for new enabling technologies that create a wide gap between how things have been done and how they can be done.Collection: Technology
Companies have never won. You're always either fighting for survival, or fighting for relevance.Collection: Fighting
I have a lot of faults. I often interrupt in meetings. I talk too loud. I talk too fast.Collection: Faults
Start with something simple and small, then expand over time. If people call it a 'toy' you're definitely onto something.Collection: Simple
Do things that incumbents can't or won't do because it's economically or technically infeasible.Collection: Building
We're going from a world of customized software to standardized platforms.Collection: World
I'm obsessed with speed. I'm always asking myself, 'Why can't we do things faster? Why can't it happen more efficiently? Why is this requiring three meetings instead of one?'Collection: Three
If every customer is using your product "correctly", you'll never learn anything interesting about what to do next.Collection: Interesting
I think I'm the kind of person who would be very difficult to employ - I'm pretty annoying, but driven.Collection: Thinking
The chance of failure is almost always better than the guarantee of never knowing.Collection: Knowing
Innovation is hard because solving problems people didn't know they had & building something no one needs look identical at first.Collection: People
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.Collection: Encouragement
Any time where the delta b/w what is possible and how things work today is at its widest, that's an opportunity to go build new technology.Collection: Technology
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.Collection: Moving
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.Collection: Thinking
We're enamored with the concept that there's always a price. But sometimes, your goal is to build a great company, not sell it.Collection: Goal
Startups live at the intersection of existential crisis and everything going perfectly great.Collection: Existential
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.Collection: Jobs
I don't use many apps. I use naps.Collection: Naps
Uber is a $3.5 billion lesson in building for how the world *should* work instead of optimizing for how the world *does* workCollection: Uber
The only barrier to entry you can create is to consistently build a great product.Collection: Barriers
I believe there's plenty of market for each; we're talking about an ecosystem that is going to support billions of devices, so a competitive landscape is good for consumers, developers, and the platforms alike. Apple brings a smooth elegance to its devices and platform, with the best marketplace experience to boot. Google brings a higher volume of devices as well as a more diverse ecosystem to interact with. The real story here is that Microsoft is nowhere to be seen, ending a two-decade monopoly and creating biggest opportunity for software startups probably ever.Collection: Real
Sometimes things are the way they are and can't be changed, other times it's because no one ever tried. Your job is to find the latter.Collection: Jobs
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?Collection: Running
You can keep 'consumer' DNA at the center of your product. That will always mean that adoption is easier.Collection: Mean
Innovation in tech favors the naive and the stubborn. If you are too rational you won't tackle problems that others once failed at.Collection: Innovation
Better to be right about the trend and wrong about the implementation, than the other way around.Collection: Trends
Modularize, don't customize. Build a platform as opposed to building all of the custom technology and custom vertical experiences.Collection: Technology
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.Collection: Weekend
The IT model of the enterprise has become a lot more user lead.Collection: Building
Jeff Bezos is opening a retail store and owns a newspaper. Turns out everything we thought about the Internet is wrong.Collection: Retail