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.
AARON LEVIEYou 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.
AARON LEVIEGo after the customers that are working in the future, but haven’t totally lost their minds.
AARON LEVIEIn an IT lead world, incumbents generally win because they have the existing relationship with the IT organization.
AARON LEVIETip: Take the stodgiest, oldest, slowest moving industry you can find. And build amazing software for it.
AARON LEVIEExecute like there’s no tomorrow, strategize like there will be.
AARON LEVIEThe chance of failure is almost always better than the guarantee of never knowing.
AARON LEVIEI 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 LEVIEOpportunity lives at the intersection of what people need tomorrow and can be just barely built today.
AARON LEVIEYou 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.
AARON LEVIEWe’re going from a world of customized software to standardized platforms.
AARON LEVIEInnovation is hard because solving problems people didn’t know they had & building something no one needs look identical at first.
AARON LEVIEI’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.
AARON LEVIEJeff Bezos is opening a retail store and owns a newspaper. Turns out everything we thought about the Internet is wrong.
AARON LEVIEAll 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.
AARON LEVIEYou can keep ‘consumer’ DNA at the center of your product. That will always mean that adoption is easier.
AARON LEVIEListen to your customers, but don’t always build exactly what they’re telling you. This is a really key distinction around building enterprise software.
AARON LEVIE