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You’ll learn more in a day talking to customers than a week of brainstorming, a month of watching competitors, or a year of market research.

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

Business Determined Organize Productive Two
Startups live at the intersection of existential crisis and everything going perfectly great.
AARON LEVIE

Crisis Existential Great Perfectly Startup
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
We’re going from a world of customized software to standardized platforms.
AARON LEVIE

Building Custom Platform Standard World
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 best technology is aimed far enough in the future that it stands out, but close enough to the present that it blends in.
AARON LEVIE

Close Enough Out Present Standing Technology
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
It’s unfortunate biologically we have to sleep.
AARON LEVIE

Biological Sleep Unfortunate
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
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
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
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
Look for new enabling technologies that create a wide gap between how things have been done and how they can be done.
AARON LEVIE

Done Enable Look Technology
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
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

You’ll learn more in a day talking to customers than a week of brainstorming, a month of watching competitors, or a year of market research.

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You’ll learn more in a day talking to customers than a week of brainstorming, a month of watching competitors, or a year of market research.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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