Aaron Levie is an American entrepreneur, Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder and Chairman at Box, which he launched in 2005 with CFO and Co-Founder, Dylan Smith. He is the visionary behind Box’s product and platform strategy, which focuses on incorporating the best of secure content collaboration with an intuitive user experience suited to the way people work today. May his quotes inspire you to take action so that you may live your dreams.
1. “Start with the assumption that the best way to do something is not the way it’s being done right now.” Aaron Levie
2. “Uber is a $3.5 billion lesson in building for how the world ‘should’ work instead of optimizing for how the world ‘does’ work.” Aaron Levie
3. “Better to be right about the trend and wrong about the implementation, than the other way around.” Aaron Levie
4. “Modularize, don’t customize. Build a platform as opposed to building all of the custom technology and custom vertical experiences.” Aaron Levie
5. “Startups live at the intersection of existential crisis and everything going perfectly great.” Aaron Levie
6. “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.” Aaron Levie
7. “Go after the customers that are working in the future, but haven’t totally lost their minds.” Aaron Levie
8. “It’s unfortunate biologically we have to sleep.” Aaron Levie
9. “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.” Aaron Levie
10. “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
11. “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
12. “The only barrier to entry you can create is to consistently build a great product.” Aaron Levie
13. “When you’re doing something you’re passionate about, stress becomes a feature not a bug.” Aaron Levie
14. “We’re going from a world of customized software to standardized platforms.” Aaron Levie
15. “Look for new enabling technologies that create a wide gap between how things have been done and how they can be done.” Aaron Levie
16. “Better to be too early and have to try again, than be too late and have to catch up.” Aaron Levie
17. “A lot of being productive personally is determined by how you organize your entire business. You can’t separate those two things.” Aaron Levie
18. “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
19. “Your product should sell itself, but that does not mean you don’t need salespeople.” Aaron Levie
20. “In an IT lead world, incumbents generally win because they have the existing relationship with the IT organization.” Aaron Levie
21. “Tip: Take the stodgiest, oldest, slowest moving industry you can find. And build amazing software for it.” Aaron Levie
22. “What happens to the Microsoft, 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
23. “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
24. “If people don’t think the odds are against you, you’re doing it wrong.” Aaron Levie
25. “Every single industry is going through a major business model and technology-oriented disruption.” Aaron Levie
26. “Everything about the enterprise, and then by definition the software the enterprise uses has changed – just in the last 5 years.” Aaron Levie
27. “The product that wins is the one that bridges customers to the future, not the one that requires a giant leap.” Aaron Levie
28. “The chance of failure is almost always better than the guarantee of never knowing.” Aaron Levie
29. “Start with something simple and small, then expand over time. If people call it a ‘toy’ you’re definitely onto something.” Aaron Levie
30. “If there could’ve ever been a magical time to build an enterprise software company, now is absolutely that time.” Aaron Levie
31. “Opportunity lives at the intersection of what people need tomorrow and can be just barely built today.” Aaron Levie
32. “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
33. “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
34. “Execute like there’s no tomorrow, strategize like there will be.” Aaron Levie
35. “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.” Aaron Levie
