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Do things that incumbents can’t or won’t do because it’s economically or technically infeasible.

Aaron Levie

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

Internet Newspaper Retail Store Wrong
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
You want to find the really crazy but still somewhat reasonable outliers within the customer ecosystem.
AARON LEVIE

Crazy Customer Ecosystem Reasonable
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
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
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
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
Always look for these changing technology factors- any market that has a significant change in the underlying raw materials …or enabling factors, is an environment that is about to change in a very significant way.
AARON LEVIE

Change Market Material Raw Significant Technology
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
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
Companies have never won. You’re always either fighting for survival, or fighting for relevance.
AARON LEVIE

Entrepreneur Fighting Relevance Survival
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

Do things that incumbents can’t or won’t do because it’s economically or technically infeasible.

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Do things that incumbents can’t or won’t do because it’s economically or technically infeasible.

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