Aaron Winsor Levie (pronounced /ˈærən ˈlɛvi/) is an American entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of the enterprise cloud company Box.
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.
You can keep 'consumer' DNA at the center of your product. That will always mean that adoption is easier.
Everything about the enterprise, and then by definition the software the enterprise uses has changed - just in the last 5 years.
A lot of being productive personally is determined by how you organize your entire business. You can't separate those two things.
If people don't think the odds are against you, you're doing it wrong.
Start with something simple and small, then expand over time. If people call it a 'toy' you're definitely onto something.
Startups live at the intersection of existential crisis and everything going perfectly great.
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.
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.
We're going from a world of customized software to standardized platforms.
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.
Always look for these changing technology factors- any market that has a significant change in the underlying raw materials. . . or enabling factors, is an environment that is about to change in a very significant way.
I think because of the iPhone and the fact that we now have a ubiquitous internet, our creativity in the startup space is 10 times different. Every single industry, every single market, is going to be technology-driven in some way. There's an infinite opportunity for startups because now you can go and solve problems that previously looked like they had nothing to do with technology.
Better to be too early and have to try again, than be too late and have to catch up.
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.
If every customer is using your product "correctly", you'll never learn anything interesting about what to do next.
The product that wins is the one that bridges customers to the future, not the one that requires a giant leap.
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.
We didn't really start the company to go build an enterprise software company.
When you're doing something you're passionate about, stress becomes a featurenot a bug.