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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

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
That’s already been tried before only means the first attempt got it wrong.
AARON LEVIE

Attempt First Mean Tried Wrong
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
When you’re doing something you’re passionate about, stress becomes a featurenot a bug.
AARON LEVIE

Bug Feature Passionate Something Stress
The chance of failure is almost always better than the guarantee of never knowing.
AARON LEVIE

Always Chance Failure Guarantee Know Knowing
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
It’s unfortunate biologically we have to sleep.
AARON LEVIE

Biological Sleep Unfortunate
You want to find the really crazy but still somewhat reasonable outliers within the customer ecosystem.
AARON LEVIE

Crazy Customer Ecosystem Reasonable
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
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
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
If you don’t go to every level of your company, you distance yourself from the marketplace and from your people.
AARON LEVIE

Company Distance Level Marketplace People
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
Go after the customers that are working in the future, but haven’t totally lost their minds.
AARON LEVIE

Building Customer Future Lost Mind Working
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 can keep ‘consumer’ DNA at the center of your product. That will always mean that adoption is easier.
AARON LEVIE

Adoption Consumer DNA Easier Mean

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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