Innovation in tech favors the naive and the stubborn. If you are too rational you won’t tackle problems that others once failed at.
AARON LEVIEGo after the customers that are working in the future, but haven’t totally lost their minds.
More Aaron Levie Quotes
-
-
Listen 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 -
Entrepreneurship: 10% coach, 20% player, 30% cheerleader, 40% waterboy.
AARON LEVIE -
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.
AARON LEVIE -
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 -
Go after the customers that are working in the future, but haven’t totally lost their minds.
AARON LEVIE -
The only way to avoid disruption is to constantly do what you would if you were just starting out.
AARON LEVIE -
Everything about the enterprise, and then by definition the software the enterprise uses has changed – just in the last 5 years.
AARON LEVIE -
I’m obsessed with speed. I’m always asking myself, ‘Why can’t we do things faster? Why can’t it happen more efficiently? Why is this requiring three meetings instead of one?’
AARON LEVIE -
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.
AARON LEVIE -
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.
AARON LEVIE -
If you don’t go to every level of your company, you distance yourself from the marketplace and from your people.
AARON LEVIE -
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.
AARON LEVIE -
I think I’m the kind of person who would be very difficult to employ – I’m pretty annoying, but driven.
AARON LEVIE -
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.
AARON LEVIE -
Tip: Take the stodgiest, oldest, slowest moving industry you can find. And build amazing software for it.
AARON LEVIE -
In the enterprise you want to start intentionally small.
AARON LEVIE -
Better to be too early and have to try again, than be too late and have to catch up.
AARON LEVIE -
Startups often win because it’s easier to see what comes next when you don’t have to worry about maintaining what came last.
AARON LEVIE -
A lot of being productive personally is determined by how you organize your entire business. You can’t separate those two things.
AARON LEVIE -
Read these 3 books – Crossing the Chasm, Innovators Dilemma and Behind the Cloud.
AARON LEVIE -
Look for new enabling technologies that create a wide gap between how things have been done and how they can be done.
AARON LEVIE -
Start with the assumption that the best way to do something is not the way it’s being done right now.
AARON LEVIE -
The IT model of the enterprise has become a lot more user lead.
AARON LEVIE -
You want to find the really crazy but still somewhat reasonable outliers within the customer ecosystem.
AARON LEVIE -
The chance of failure is almost always better than the guarantee of never knowing.
AARON LEVIE -
If every customer is using your product “correctly”, you’ll never learn anything interesting about what to do next.
AARON LEVIE