Aaron Levie, founder of Box, said his passion and drive - and
what ultimately keeps him going despite the long hours and obstacles along the
way - are derived from finding answers to challenges that impact massive
numbers of people every day.
“I'm motivated by solving problems. Sometimes these are
problems we didn't even realise we had, or maybe they're problems we're well
aware of, but haven't historically had the power to solve. And it's a
never-ending thing, because the rate of change in the technology industry
generates all-new challenges, as well as all-new opportunities to solve them,”
Levie says.
When he started Box in 2005, he had a very simple problem in
mind. Sharing content between people was absurdly difficult, and was often
achieved by passing thumb drives back-and-forth, or sending files as email
attachments. Levie decided to tackle this problem by making it incredibly easy
for people to store and share information online.
"That's still the core of our mission today, but in the
past seven years, the world has changed dramatically. The rise of post-PC
devices - smartphones and tablets - is as transformative as the PC revolution was
in the '80s and '90s. And in 2007, we realised that the information sharing
challenges of enterprises were far more interesting than those of consumers, so
we decided to address that, going up against some of the largest technology
incumbents in the process."
“Every day we ask ourselves: how can we preserve the
simplicity of sharing and collaboration for users, while meeting the highly
complex needs of enterprises with hundreds of thousands of employees? It's a
challenge that's constantly evolving, and it's an endless source of motivation
for the entire crew at Box.”
