Quote

Uber is a $3.5 billion lesson in building for how the world *should* work instead of optimizing for how the world *does* work

Aaron Levie

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Aaron Levie
Age: 38
Born: 1985
Born: December 27
Entrepreneur
Seattle
Washington
Lessons
Instead
Building
Doe
Optimizing
Work
Uber
World
Billion
Lesson
Billions

More quotes by Aaron Levie

Image
I don't use many apps. I use naps.
Aaron Levie
Image
My mom is proud of me. But she might not be too happy about the hours I keep or how little I eat. I wake up so late that it would be inappropriate to have breakfast. At most, I will have a snack in the day and dinner. I realize that it's not the healthiest way to live, but it's all I really have time for.
Aaron Levie
Image
The only barrier to entry you can create is to consistently build a great product.
Aaron Levie
Image
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.
Aaron Levie
Image
Jeff Bezos is opening a retail store and owns a newspaper. Turns out everything we thought about the Internet is wrong.
Aaron Levie
Image
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.
Aaron Levie
Image
Tip: Take the stodgiest, oldest, slowest moving industry you can find. And build amazing software for it.
Aaron Levie
Image
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.
Aaron Levie
Image
When you're doing something you're passionate about, stress becomes a featurenot a bug.
Aaron Levie
Image
My co-founder Dylan Smith and I left our junior year of college to move to the Bay Area. To the horror of our friends' parents, we actually had two other friends drop out of college to work on the product. The four of us were just working non-stop growing Box.
Aaron Levie
Image
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.
Aaron Levie
Image
The benefit to building a startup is that customers don't have the same kind of friction when they adopt new technology.
Aaron Levie
Image
You want to find the really crazy but still somewhat reasonable outliers within the customer ecosystem.
Aaron Levie
Image
If there could've ever been a magical time to build an enterprise software company, now is absolutely that time.
Aaron Levie
Image
Start with something simple and small, then expand over time. If people call it a 'toy' you're definitely onto something.
Aaron Levie
Image
Start with the assumption that the best way to do something is not the way it's being done right now.
Aaron Levie
Image
We're going from a world of customized software to standardized platforms.
Aaron Levie
Image
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.
Aaron Levie
Image
Why we do what we do: that moment when you get to see the future on your computer screen before the rest of the world.
Aaron Levie
Image
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.
Aaron Levie