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.

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.

In a user lead model, users are bringing in their own technology... and you can build software then, around the user.

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.

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

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.

When you're doing something you're passionate about, stress becomes a featurenot a bug.