The benefit to building a startup is that customers don’t have the same kind of friction when they adopt new technology.
AARON LEVIEGo after the customers that are working in the future, but haven’t totally lost their minds.
More Aaron Levie Quotes
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Execute like there’s no tomorrow, strategize like there will be.
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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.
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In an IT lead world, incumbents generally win because they have the existing relationship with the IT organization.
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I’m certainly not into money and prestige. For me there is simply nothing more exciting than people involved in the creation of great products. That is what drives me.
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Start with something simple and small, then expand over time. If people call it a ‘toy’ you’re definitely onto something.
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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.
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There’s a lot of pride that business owners have. It’s actually really critical that pride and ownership extends to everyone in the organization. I think of everyone is in the same boat in driving the company forward.
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It’s unfortunate biologically we have to sleep.
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Companies have never won. You’re always either fighting for survival, or fighting for relevance.
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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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I think people are always able to achieve more than they think they can. While that’s cliche, I don’t know if managers think about that enough. You have to set your sights extremely high.
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I have a lot of faults. I often interrupt in meetings. I talk too loud. I talk too fast.
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The 10% between 90% done to 100% done takes most of the time, causes most of the stress, but is all of the value.
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Better to be right about the trend and wrong about the implementation, than the other way around.
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In a user lead model, users are bringing in their own technology… and you can build software then, around the user.
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Sometimes things are the way they are and can’t be changed, other times it’s because no one ever tried. Your job is to find the latter.
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You want to find the really crazy but still somewhat reasonable outliers within the customer ecosystem.
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A lot of being productive personally is determined by how you organize your entire business. You can’t separate those two things.
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If people don’t think the odds are against you, you’re doing it wrong.
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The product that wins is the one that bridges customers to the future, not the one that requires a giant leap.
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Startups often win because it’s easier to see what comes next when you don’t have to worry about maintaining what came last.
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You intentionally start small, because you will not be able to compete with an incumbent… because the incumbent is always going to go for the full solution.
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Entrepreneurship: 10% coach, 20% player, 30% cheerleader, 40% waterboy.
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We’re going from a world of customized software to standardized platforms.
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Read these 3 books – Crossing the Chasm, Innovators Dilemma and Behind the Cloud.
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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