black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

Aaron Levie

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

Constant Disruption Out Starting Way
Opportunity lives at the intersection of what people need tomorrow and can be just barely built today.
AARON LEVIE

Bare Build Need Opportunity People Tomorrow
The only barrier to entry you can create is to consistently build a great product.
AARON LEVIE

Barrie Consistently Create Entry Great Product
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
In the enterprise you want to start intentionally small.
AARON LEVIE

Building Enterprise Intention Small Want
Do things that incumbents can’t or won’t do because it’s economically or technically infeasible.
AARON LEVIE

Building Incumbent Infeasible Technical Thing
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
Modularize, don’t customize. Build a platform as opposed to building all of the custom technology and custom vertical experiences.
AARON LEVIE

Building Custom Modularize Oppose Platform 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
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
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
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

Building Customer Distinction Key Listen Software Tell
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
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

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Aaron Levie Quotes