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The chance of failure is almost always better than the guarantee of never knowing.

Aaron Levie

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
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 you’re waiting for encouragement from others, you’re doing it wrong. By the time people think an idea is good, it’s probably too late.
AARON LEVIE

Encouragement Idea People Thinking Wait Wrong
Startups live at the intersection of existential crisis and everything going perfectly great.
AARON LEVIE

Crisis Existential Great Perfectly Startup
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
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
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
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
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
The most customer-centric organizations can answer any question by deciding what’s best for the customer, without ever having to ask.
AARON LEVIE

Answer Ask Centric Customer Decide Organization
You want to find the really crazy but still somewhat reasonable outliers within the customer ecosystem.
AARON LEVIE

Crazy Customer Ecosystem Reasonable
Too little process and you can’t get good work done. Too much process and you can’t get any work done. Most companies never find the middle.
AARON LEVIE

Done Little Much Person Process
Your product should sell itself, but that does not mean you don’t need salespeople.
AARON LEVIE

Doe Mean Need People Product Sales
In an IT lead world, incumbents generally win because they have the existing relationship with the IT organization.
AARON LEVIE

Incumbent IT Organisation Organization Relationship Winning World
You can look at the cost structure of an incumbent company and discover: where are they not going to be able to drop their prices… because that business model is fundamental to the existence of the company.
AARON LEVIE

Company Cost Discover Fundamental Look Structure

The chance of failure is almost always better than the guarantee of never knowing.

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The chance of failure is almost always better than the guarantee of never knowing.

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