Lecture 12 - Building for the Enterprise (Aaron Levie)

Levie argues that enterprise buyers judge software by business value and productivity. Box had too many features for many consumers but too little security and control for enterprises, so the team had to choose which audience to serve.

Levie describes difficulty sharing files in college and at an internship. Falling storage costs, faster networks and stronger browsers made a simpler online service possible. His account links an existing pain point with a change in what could be built economically.

Box initially wanted to reach users without a traditional sales intermediary. Levie later distinguishes a product that is easy to adopt from the consultative sales help an enterprise may need to deploy it successfully.

Look for new enabling technologies where the gap between how things are done and how they could be done is widest. For Box, storage was getting cheaper, the internet faster and browsers better, while file sharing stayed clumsy.

Mobile devices shifted enterprise purchasing to users bringing in their own tools. In an IT-led world incumbents win, but users can bring your product in and the enterprise can then buy control, security and scalability.

Platforms let Box's customers be international in the first weeks, which usually took years with traditional enterprise software.

Levie suggests looking for technology or business-model changes an incumbent cannot easily adopt. He also recommends working with forward-looking customers to find emerging needs, while interpreting requests rather than implementing every suggested feature.