18 May 15 Industry Insights
At the age of 20, Aaron Levie founded what is now one of the hottest tech startups in the world and leading-innovator in cloud solutions services. Highly articulate and with wisdom far beyond his years, Levie has become one of the most-watched Silicon Valley CEOs in recent years and an inspiration to techpreneurs globally.
RELEVANT: An Interview with Box Inc: Disrupting the UK Cloud Market
As an homage to this man's genius, we’ve rounded up some of our favourite quotes, tweets and pictures.
1
"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?'"
2
"One of our core values is 'Get s*** done.' We have a very execution-oriented culture. … Another one of our values is 'Take risks. Fail fast.' If we fail fast, we can correct mistakes quickly."
3
“Tip: Take the stodgiest, oldest, slowest moving industry you can find. And build amazing software for it.”
4
“The way that startups have to compete against big companies is by focusing on what are the things that the big companies can’t do. It is never enough that you are just building a better product, or that you put together some different type of optimization on the service. You really fundamentally have to attack dimensions that are almost impossible for an incumbent to be competing on.”
5
"It’s all about what are you trying to build and change that other people want to be a part of that process and that experience, and then going after the best possible people that you work with to go do that. That’s what we did at Box."
6
“Never give up: They said Neil Armstrong wouldn’t land on the moon. That Newton couldn’t discover gravity. Or that Snapchat would never work.”
7
"My acronym is WWSJD: What would Steve Jobs do?"
8
"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."
9
"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."
10
"The first 20 years of the web were won by those that built the best infrastructure. Now it's won by those that build the best experiences."
11
“In many industries the market size isn't constrained by limited demand, but by broken user experience. Fix that, and you unlock the market.”
12
“Don't try and get a small percentage of a big market. Try and grow a "small" market by a large percentage. Uber is the $40B example of this.”
13
"I don't use many apps. I use naps."
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An Interview with Box Inc: Disrupting the UK Cloud Market
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