Aaron Levie
Aaron Levie
Aaron Winsor Levieis an American entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of the enterprise cloud company Box...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth27 December 1985
CountryUnited States of America
thinking would-be kind
I think I'm the kind of person who would be very difficult to employ - I'm pretty annoying, but driven.
sleep unfortunate
It's unfortunate biologically we have to sleep.
mom teacher dad
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.
inspiration technology entertainment
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.
meaningful adversity technology
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.
thinking people important
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.
people prestige creation
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.
running real party
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?
thinking iphone ecosystems
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.
retail internet stores
Jeff Bezos is opening a retail store and owns a newspaper. Turns out everything we thought about the Internet is wrong.
jobs way sometimes
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.
talking years research
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.
starting-out way disruption
The only way to avoid disruption is to constantly do what you would if you were just starting out.
goal sometimes company
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.