#150 CEO Box, Aaron Levie w/ Mamoon Hamid: Open For Business
Grit7 Elo 2023

#150 CEO Box, Aaron Levie w/ Mamoon Hamid: Open For Business

Guest: Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, and Mamoon Hamid, partner at Kleiner Perkins

When he was a newly minted venture capitalist at USVP, Mamoon Hamid got a tip that he should meet a young entrepreneur named Aaron Levie, and fought for the right to invest in his cloud storage startup, Box. For years after that initial investment, the two men say, Box’s fate was precarious: “We could have died any day,” Mamoon says, and Aaron recalled several times he had to be talked “down from a ledge.” Today, they tell us how Box established itself as “open for business” — a concept Mamoon hounded Aaron with in the early years — and grew into success.

In this episode, Aaron, Mamoon, and Joubin discuss Box socks, authenticity at work, Josh Stein, living in the office, over-diligence, Google Platypus, the 2008 crash, nostalgia, everything is personal, the ten-person test, burnout, Dan Levin, ChatGPT, Parker Conrad, and Silicon Valley as “technology town.”

In this episode, we cover:

  • “Make mom proud, unless she’s evil” (01:59)
  • How Mamoon and Aaron met (04:38)
  • Mamoon’s first investment in Box (11:15)
  • Pausing the term sheet (16:08)
  • “We could have died any day” (19:01)
  • What is company-building? (23:23)
  • Open For Business (25:27)
  • Getting to cash flow positive (27:52)
  • Slow growth with no burn vs. fast growth, high burn (31:15)
  • Tough feedback (34:31)
  • Overcoming challenges around the Box IPO (36:31)
  • Growing as CEO (38:35)
  • The Apple Vision Pro and AI (44:15)
  • Investing in cutting-edge companies (49:15)
  • Using AI to re-juice growth (51:48)
  • How Aaron educates himself (54:22)
  • Business as a sport (57:14)
  • Who Box is hiring and what “grit” means to Aaron (01:00:44)

Links:

Jaksot(278)

#101 CEO Google Cloud, Thomas Kurian: Competitor-Aware and Customer-Obsessed

#101 CEO Google Cloud, Thomas Kurian: Competitor-Aware and Customer-Obsessed

“When I grew up in Bangalore, I’d never seen a computer,” says Thomas Kurian. The former president of Oracle, now the CEO of Google Cloud, remembers learning how to write while sitting outside his chi...

29 Elo 202251min

#100 Chairman of Kleiner Perkins, John Doerr: Getting Into Trouble with Disruptors

#100 Chairman of Kleiner Perkins, John Doerr: Getting Into Trouble with Disruptors

After Kleiner Perkins chairman John Doerr first invested in Google — $12.8 million for 13 percent of the company — he told co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin that they needed to hire a CEO to help...

22 Elo 20221h 6min

CEO Touch the Top, Erik Weihenmayer: Climbing Everest Blind

CEO Touch the Top, Erik Weihenmayer: Climbing Everest Blind

Touch The Top CEO Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind person to summit Mount Everest, climbs hundreds of mountains every year. And he’s learned over the years that sometimes, the smartest thing to do in...

15 Elo 20221h 10min

Co-founder and CEO G2, Godard Abel: Finding Opportunity in Challenging Times

Co-founder and CEO G2, Godard Abel: Finding Opportunity in Challenging Times

After rescuing his first startup BigMachines from the brink of bankruptcy and building it to positive cash flow, Godard Abel thought the express lane of life was opening up to him. But after the board...

8 Elo 20221h

Founding CRO @HubSpot / Prof @HBS / CoFounder @Stage 2 Capital Mark Roberge: The Science and Psychology of Scaling

Founding CRO @HubSpot / Prof @HBS / CoFounder @Stage 2 Capital Mark Roberge: The Science and Psychology of Scaling

Mark Roberge’s first anxiety attack hit him six months after 9/11, and his second hit him in the middle of a big speech while he was an executive at HubSpot. And Roberge, who now lectures at Harvard B...

1 Elo 20221h 9min

CMO Canva, Zach Kitschke: From Employee Number 5 To $40 Billion Valuation

CMO Canva, Zach Kitschke: From Employee Number 5 To $40 Billion Valuation

Canva CMO Zach Kitschke was the company’s fifth employee, joining right before the product launched to the public — or, that was the plan anyway. Emerging technologies like HTML5 and negative feedback...

25 Heinä 20221h 5min

Founder & CEO Freshworks, Girish Mathrubootham: Success Is In the Big Things, Happiness Is In the Small Things

Founder & CEO Freshworks, Girish Mathrubootham: Success Is In the Big Things, Happiness Is In the Small Things

Girish Mathrubootham is the founder and CEO of Freshworks, the first Indian SaaS company to be listed in NASDAQ — and when he’s in his home country, he gets the celebrity treatment. Freshworks’ 2021 I...

18 Heinä 20221h 13min

CMO Riot Games, Jason Bunge: Change Is Inevitable, Get Used To It

CMO Riot Games, Jason Bunge: Change Is Inevitable, Get Used To It

Riot Games CMO Jason Bunge knows you might roll your eyes when he says this, but he doesn’t care, because it’s the truth: Marketing doesn’t get enough respect. Although many companies have convinced t...

11 Heinä 20221h 2min

Suosittua kategoriassa Liike-elämä ja talous

sijotuskasti
psykopodiaa-podcast
mimmit-sijoittaa
rss-rahapodi
rss-rahamania
rss-lahtijat
inderespodi
ostan-asuntoja-podcast
rss-h-asselmoilanen
rss-paasipodi
herrasmieshakkerit
rahapuhetta
pomojen-suusta
sijoituspodi
rss-laakispodi
rss-bisnesta-bebeja
taloudellinen-mielenrauha
syo-nuku-saasta
asuntoasiaa-paivakirjat
rss-startup-ministerio