Aaron Levie Quotes

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

Startups often win because it's easier to see what comes next when you don't have to worry about maintaining what came last.

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

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.

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

Better to be too early and have to try again, than be too late and have to catch up.

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 people are always able to achieve more than they think they can. While that’s cliche, I don’t know if managers think about that enough. You have to set your sights extremely high.

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

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

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

The chance of failure is almost always better than the guarantee of never knowing.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Any time where the delta b/w what is possible and how things work today is at its widest, that's an opportunity to go build new technology.

If people don't think the odds are against you, you're doing it wrong.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

The most customer-centric organizations can answer any question by deciding what's best for the customer, without ever having to ask.

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.

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

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

We didn't really start the company to go build an enterprise software company.

In an IT lead world, incumbents generally win because they have the existing relationship with the IT organization.

Everything about the enterprise, and then by definition the software the enterprise uses has changed - just in the last 5 years.

The benefit to building a startup is that customers don't have the same kind of friction when they adopt new technology.

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

You can keep 'consumer' DNA at the center of your product. That will always mean that adoption is easier.

I don't use many apps. I use naps.

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

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

Too little process and you can't get good work done. Too much process and you can't get any work done. Most companies never find the middle.

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

Do things that incumbents can't or won't do because it's economically or technically infeasible.

The only way to avoid disruption is to constantly do what you would if you were just starting out.

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

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.