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I think I’m the kind of person who would be very difficult to employ – I’m pretty annoying, but driven.

Aaron Levie

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
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
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
Why we do what we do: that moment when you get to see the future on your computer screen before the rest of the world.
AARON LEVIE

Computer Future Moment Screen World
It’s unfortunate biologically we have to sleep.
AARON LEVIE

Biological Sleep Unfortunate
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
I have a lot of faults. I often interrupt in meetings. I talk too loud. I talk too fast.
AARON LEVIE

Fast Fault Loud Meeting Talk
Read these 3 books – Crossing the Chasm, Innovators Dilemma and Behind the Cloud.
AARON LEVIE

Book Building Chasm Cloud Clouds Innovator
Innovation is hard because solving problems people didn’t know they had & building something no one needs look identical at first.
AARON LEVIE

Build Innovation Need People Problem Solve
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
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
You want to find the really crazy but still somewhat reasonable outliers within the customer ecosystem.
AARON LEVIE

Crazy Customer Ecosystem Reasonable
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
Startups live at the intersection of existential crisis and everything going perfectly great.
AARON LEVIE

Crisis Existential Great Perfectly Startup
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
We didn’t really start the company to go build an enterprise software company.
AARON LEVIE

Building Company Enterprise Software Start

I think I’m the kind of person who would be very difficult to employ – I’m pretty annoying, but driven.

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I think I’m the kind of person who would be very difficult to employ – I’m pretty annoying, but driven.

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