Aaron Levie
CEO and Co-founder of Box
Discussion
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Aaron Levie
@levie · CEO, Box
Hi, I'm Aaron Levie, lead magician and CEO at Box. Looking forward to today's chat!
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Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
Welcome, Aaron! You're known for witty, #viral tweets. Who on Twitter inspires you?
BONUS QUESTION: Are you @StartupLJackson?
Garrison Snelling
@dev_gar · Founder, RemoteTogether
When can I have your job? Say next week?
Cuan-Chai Megghross
@iamcuan · Angel Investor, Brainyloft
@levie What do you do to prepare for the day to ensure maximum productivity?
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Aaron Levie
@levie · CEO, Box
@iamcuan Generally I wake up and read email in bed for about 30 minutes (bad habit, I know), but it allows me to knock out most key issues right away (p.s. iphone 6+ is super helpful). Then I head into work (sometimes have to Uber to get more work done in the car), and grab 2 cups of coffee when I arrive at the office. From there it's about usually 7-8 hours of meetings with various teams, after which I try and take a nap for ~20 minutes, grab dinner, and I'm back at it for another 4-5 hours.
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Aaron Levie
@levie · CEO, Box
Ronnie Rendel
@ronnie86019246 · Yesod of Tevunah, New Era
Preston Long-Lamoureux
@pmlonglamoureux · @Prog_Code Staffer | Progressive
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Aaron Levie
@levie · CEO, Box
@pmlonglamoureux Listening to our early customers even more earlier on -- we wavered a bit too much in the initial years on our strategy, and we could have moved much faster in the first 1.5-2 years.
Cuan-Chai Megghross
@iamcuan · Angel Investor, Brainyloft
@levie What type of struggles and roadblocks did you face building Box in the very beginning?
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Aaron Levie
@levie · CEO, Box
@iamcuan Initially our biggest challenge was that we didn't know what we wanted to be when we "grew up". We started as a consumer product that also worked for businesses, and eventually (about 1.5 years into the business) we determined that balancing these two very different worlds and use-cases wasn't going to lead to world domination. So we went back and forth a ton in the early days, but ultimately decided to "listen" to the market and go after a space where we felt we could best innovate (and compete). That was the enterprise market.
Emily Hodgins
@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt
@levie thanks for being here! 🙌 What has been the most memorable or surprising moment of your career to date?
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Aaron Levie
@levie · CEO, Box
@ems_hodge I'm fortunate that there have been a lot of memorable moments -- one of the more fun ones was interviewing Tim Cook at BoxWorks last fall, though! And doing a "board meeting" on the court of a Mavericks game when Mark Cuban initially invested.
Jason Hitchcock
@jasonhitchcock · Problem Solver @ Bebo
@levie What's the biggest misconception you see in the press about Box?
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Aaron Levie
@levie · CEO, Box
@jasonhitchcock That we somehow "sell storage". We obviously use storage to store files (it would be hard to run Box otherwise), but all of our value proposition is in our software layer. The vast majority of our R&D time and innovation goes toward data security, workflow, content management, collaboration, etc. -- that's ultimately what customers pay for, not the storage. And in fact the very trend that most people think could be bad for us -- Amazon lowers its storage prices/etc. -- is GOOD for us, as we leverage them in some parts of our stack.
Sam Legge
@d0b0 · Product Manager, Thalmic Labs
What's your thoughts on commoditization of your and Dropbox's business vertical.
Bonus Question: What's your thoughts on Cloud Storage's involvement in VR/AR?
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Aaron Levie
@levie · CEO, Box
@d0b0 I can't speak to Dropbox's commoditization, but please see: https://www.producthunt.com/live...
Steve Young
@steve_young · Founder/janitor of Synek
You have a very "funjoyable" personality. How do you have fun while also allow people to take you seriously?
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Aaron Levie
@levie · CEO, Box
@steve_young That is a ridiculous word, I hope you invented it and it's not a meme I'm missing. There are plenty of serious things in life and business, but it's super important to have fun with what you do and not take it too seriously, otherwise what's the point!
Cam Secore
@camsecore
Hey Aaron, I'm a huge fan of yours! Box's stock price hit an all-time low today even though you guys seem to be headed in a good direction. How frustrating is this for you?
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Aaron Levie
@levie · CEO, Box
@camsecore The market is crazy right now, but the key is to not focus on the stock market (or your stock price) in the near-term. You have to have conviction around what you're building and make sure you're executing for the long run. All the best companies in the world have dealt with either being somewhat misunderstood (see Netflix, Facebook, etc.) or dealt with crazy stock market volatility, and they've had to get through it. The cool thing is having been working at Box for 11 years now, we've dealt with MUCH greater challenges. Like raising our Series B :-)