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

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

Dad Education Mom Pretty Serious Teacher
If there could’ve ever been a magical time to build an enterprise software company, now is absolutely that time.
AARON LEVIE

Building Company Enterprise Magical Software Time
Do things that incumbents can’t or won’t do because it’s economically or technically infeasible.
AARON LEVIE

Building Incumbent Infeasible Technical Thing
If every customer is using your product “correctly”, you’ll never learn anything interesting about what to do next.
AARON LEVIE

Correct Customer Interest Interesting Next
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 LEVIE

Able Building Incumbent Intention Start
Startups live at the intersection of existential crisis and everything going perfectly great.
AARON LEVIE

Crisis Existential Great Perfectly Startup
When you’re doing something you’re passionate about, stress becomes a featurenot a bug.
AARON LEVIE

Bug Feature Passionate Something Stress
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

Begin Black Coffee Cup Hand Workday
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.
AARON LEVIE

Delta Opportunity Possible Technology Today Wide
The benefit to building a startup is that customers don’t have the same kind of friction when they adopt new technology.
AARON LEVIE

Adopt Benefits Customer Friction Kind Technology
The 10% between 90% done to 100% done takes most of the time, causes most of the stress, but is all of the value.
AARON LEVIE

Cause Done Percentage Stress Time
There’s a lot of pride that business owners have. It’s actually really critical that pride and ownership extends to everyone in the organization. I think of everyone is in the same boat in driving the company forward.
AARON LEVIE

Extend Organization Ownership Pride Thinking
Innovation is hard because solving problems people didn’t know they had & building something no one needs look identical at first.
AARON LEVIE

Build Innovation Need People Problem Solve
Better to be right about the trend and wrong about the implementation, than the other way around.
AARON LEVIE

Around Better Implementation Right Trend Way Wrong
Companies have never won. You’re always either fighting for survival, or fighting for relevance.
AARON LEVIE

Entrepreneur Fighting Relevance Survival
I think I’m the kind of person who would be very difficult to employ – I’m pretty annoying, but driven.
AARON LEVIE

Annoy Driven Kind Thinking Would

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

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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