Article by vanessa gonzales

box

a profile by vanessa gonzales

CEO: Aaron Levie. Having grown up in Seattle during a generation that was just on the cusp of technology, Aaron Levie, Founder and CEO of Box, dreamed of building his own company since he was 12. This dream seemed nearly reachable, but almost too far away, as he attempted but failed at 17 different startup ideas, showing his “ability to strike out and get back up to bat, making adjustments to

Sitting in the swivel chair in Box’s Redwood City offices, I twiddled my thumbs with nervousness as I prepared to speak to the CEO of Box. Having started Box 11 years ago, Aaron Levie turned a college start-up into a million-dollar public enterprise, which is no small accomplishment.

“So Aaron,” I asked, “ I read owning a company was a childhood dream of yours is that true” “Yes, running a big one” “Okay, um, how does it feel to have accomplished that?”

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“Who said I accomplished it?”

I listen to Aaron through the headphones of my audio recorder; the way he talks is captivating, coming to life as he emphasizes his words with his hand motions and an enthusiasm I can only describe as “CEO syndrome”. I hold on to edge every word as he is narrating the tale of him and his co-founders sleeping on cots in a garage eleven years ago, at the foundations of the idea for “Box”, a cloud storage company that al-

timing after each miss” (Levie).

“Box” began as a college business plan and has ended up as a million dollar enterprise.

In december of 2003, Aaron Levie dropped out of USC to start the company with his friend, Dylan Smith. In Box’s infancy days, they “lived in a garage that was renovated, it had some cots, three [them] of had to live in one ren-

was one bunk bed, there was a cot, and [he] slept on the yoga mat, on the floor” (Levie). Eleven years later, Box has an estimated company value of nearly 1.6 billion dollars, with Levie and Smith being recognized

by Forbes on their “30 under 30” list for their accomplishments in web storage.

After high school, Levie was denied entrance to the

lows you to share, sync, and access files from virtually anywhere. Eleven years later, Box has grown to become a million dollar company,

used by twitter, netflix, Tesla and many more, even singers like Beyonce.

Box’s success has grown exponentially, becoming public instead of a private company, with hundreds of investors.

All this success comes down the genius of their

position, strategy and

ovated garage. There

film school at USC but attended their busi-

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wacky self to work” seems to come alive with beach chairs and sofas lining the end of the floor, and a ski lodge theme on the next ness school. Despite all floor. Zen these setbacks, failure rooms, couches, and was never an option for the Levie library all add Aaron Levie. In its early character and relaxyears, Box was born and ation to the office setraised in a garage. With ting. offices now in San Fran- With themes on each cisco, Redwood City, floor, Box helps it feel Austin, and New York, less like a job and more Box has expanded to like a place you would new horizons, but what love to work. With no is really innovative is segregating cubicles to the way that they be seen, Box “is an choose to structure envitheir offices. Walking down the halls of Box’s offices, Lesley Young, Senior VP of sales, speaks to me about the dreams and ambitions of none other than the CEO of Box, Aaron Levie. His desire to blend work and ronplay and “Bring your ment you’d want 4

to be in, whether you were here for 8 hours a day or 24 hours a day.

So, if you’re at Box and you need dinner, dinner is here. If you’re at Box and you haven’t had your dry cleaning done and you need it done, you can get your dry cleaning done here” (Young). A lot of offices in other areas of the nation typically believe that loose and relaxed offices decrease productivity. However, here at Box it is quite the opposite. For director of sales management, Zach Turner, Box’s loose environment has “lead to a culture of wanting to constantly learn and be curious because there’s so much power that our technology can do that we as boxers and don’t

even know is possible” (Turner).

Mantras that focus their power in a comical way help to lead the “Boxers” to success. Across the office slogans of “Make Mom Proud”, “Get Shit Done”, and “Bring your wacky self to work” line the walls. While these mantras all add in to the genius workflow that is Box, is it often a struggle to maintain a healthy

ness of Silicon Valley startups by adding in a rocketship game similar to pacman. On the other hand, the engineers would be using a certain amount of hours to develop and implement this joke software. On April 1st, the engineers went ahead and added a rocketship game as a feature of Box’s notes because, in the end, “There’s always kind of

Aaron Levie dreams of transforming from a million dollar company into a billion dollar company.

He believes that with all the upcoming growth in technology that this is possible, saying that, “as (he) look(s) out at the next 10-15 years, fundamentally, our job is gonna be building software that solves all of the problems.” Spoken by its employees and

balance of work and play in the office. During the week before April fool’s, the engineers at box had an important decision to make on whether or not to add an April Fool’s joke into Box’s notes, a feature similar to google docs. This April Fool’s joke would show the general lighthearted-

a sense of wanting to be able to be your authentic self, wanting to be able to blend, and not have to be two separate people via your work self and your personal self” (Turner). At Box, their key to success is taking their jobs to heart, but not too seriously.

Ten years from now,

founders, Box’s ability to think ahead of the curve and work with a healthy degree of conflict is what really will help the company soar into the future with great success.

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