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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

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.
AARON LEVIE

Focus Long Term Today Tomorrow
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

Build Company Concept Enamore Goal Great Sometimes
Everything about the enterprise, and then by definition the software the enterprise uses has changed – just in the last 5 years.
AARON LEVIE

Change Definition Enterprise Software Use Year
Execute like there’s no tomorrow, strategize like there will be.
AARON LEVIE

Entrepreneur Execute Like Strategize Tomorrow
Start with something simple and small, then expand over time. If people call it a ‘toy’ you’re definitely onto something.
AARON LEVIE

Definite Expand People Simple Toy
All 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 LEVIE

Ago Done Enabling Repeat Technology Year
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
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

Asking Brilliant Fast Obsessed Three
We didn’t really start the company to go build an enterprise software company.
AARON LEVIE

Building Company Enterprise Software Start
It’s unfortunate biologically we have to sleep.
AARON LEVIE

Biological Sleep Unfortunate
Better to be too early and have to try again, than be too late and have to catch up.
AARON LEVIE

Catch Early Late Too Try Trying
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

Dangerous Important Incredible People Politics Thinking
Startups live at the intersection of existential crisis and everything going perfectly great.
AARON LEVIE

Crisis Existential Great Perfectly Startup
I don’t use many apps. I use naps.
AARON LEVIE

App Many Nap Use
A lot of being productive personally is determined by how you organize your entire business. You can’t separate those two things.
AARON LEVIE

Business Determined Organize Productive Two
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

Billion Doe Instead Optimize Uber World

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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