Aaron Levie Quotes

You intentionally start small, because you will not be able to compete with an incumbent... because the incumbent is always going to go for the full solution.

The 10% between 90% done to 100% done takes most of the time, causes most of the stress, but is all of the value.

The IT model of the enterprise has become a lot more user lead.

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 don't use many apps. I use naps.

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.

Start with something simple and small, then expand over time. If people call it a 'toy' you're definitely onto something.

Better to be right about the trend and wrong about the implementation, than the other way around.

The best technology is aimed far enough in the future that it stands out, but close enough to the present that it blends in.

Companies have never won. You're always either fighting for survival, or fighting for relevance.

If every customer is using your product "correctly", you'll never learn anything interesting about what to do next.

Start with the assumption that the best way to do something is not the way it's being done right now.

You want to find the really crazy but still somewhat reasonable outliers within the customer ecosystem.

That's already been tried before only means the first attempt got it wrong.

Your product should sell itself, but that does not mean you don't need salespeople.

Execute like there's no tomorrow, strategize like there will be.

Tip: Take the stodgiest, oldest, slowest moving industry you can find. And build amazing software for it.

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.

Entrepreneurship: 10% coach, 20% player, 30% cheerleader, 40% waterboy.

Startups live at the intersection of existential crisis and everything going perfectly great.

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.

The only barrier to entry you can create is to consistently build a great product.

Look for new enabling technologies that create a wide gap between how things have been done and how they can be done.

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?

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.

I think I'm the kind of person who would be very difficult to employ - I'm pretty annoying, but driven.

All we're really doing is repeating technologies that were tried 10, 20, 30 years ago... it's just that it was too expensive, too unusable, and we didn't have the enabling technologies to make it possible.

Modularize, don't customize. Build a platform as opposed to building all of the custom technology and custom vertical experiences.

Jeff Bezos is opening a retail store and owns a newspaper. Turns out everything we thought about the Internet is wrong.

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.

Every single industry is going through a major business model and technology oriented disruption.

We're going from a world of customized software to standardized platforms.

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?'

The product that wins is the one that bridges customers to the future, not the one that requires a giant leap.

Opportunity lives at the intersection of what people need tomorrow and can be just barely built today.

Innovation in tech favors the naive and the stubborn. If you are too rational you won't tackle problems that others once failed at.

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.

Innovation is hard because solving problems people didn't know they had & building something no one needs look identical at first.

My workday begins around 11 A.M., with a cup of black coffee in each hand. If I had more hands, there would be more coffee.

Go after the customers that are working in the future, but haven't totally lost their minds.

If there could've ever been a magical time to build an enterprise software company, now is absolutely that time.

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.

It's unfortunate biologically we have to sleep.

What happens to the Microsofts, 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.

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.

I have a lot of faults. I often interrupt in meetings. I talk too loud. I talk too fast.

You can look at the cost structure of an incumbent company and discover: where are they not going to be able to drop their prices... because that business model is fundamental to the existence of the company.

If you don't go to every level of your company, you distance yourself from the marketplace and from your people.