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Transcript of our conversation with Aaron Levie:
Immad Akhund:
- Hey everyone, welcome to the Founders in Arms podcast with me, Immad Akhund, co-founder and CEO of Mercury.
Raj Suri:
- And I'm Raj Suri, co-founder of Lima and Tribe. And today we have the one and only Aaron Levie, the founder and CEO of Box.
Aaron Levie:
- This is great. I feel like I'm on Joe Rogan. Thanks for having me.
Raj Suri:
- I hope you have the next three hours, you know, free. Yeah.
Immad Akhund:
- What, what do you think of these Egyptian pyramids anyway?
Aaron Levie:
- Where'd they come from?
Immad Akhund:
- Maybe that's where they stored all the files back in the day.
Raj Suri:
- Well, thanks so much for joining us, man. I don't even know what to where to start. You, you got, you have so many interesting opinions that we can dive into you and that you're not not afraid to share them.
Aaron Levie:
- We just talk about founders and founder shit right now, right?
Immad Akhund:
- Yeah, exactly. I think one thing that'll be interesting is, you know, you got put on this like, pretty harsh tweet about like, basically people like quiet, quitting, being in remote work and not really working.
Aaron Levie:
- We really, we have to start with that?
Immad Akhund:
- Yeah, let's start with that. Let's start with the fun stuff. Mercury's also remote work...
Aaron Levie:
- If this had been recorded just three days ago you wouldn't have that to work with.
Immad Akhund:
- I mean, we would've had something else.
Aaron Levie:
- Okay. Alright.
Immad Akhund:
- Yeah. Mercury's also a remote work environment. Are you like super open to remote work at Box?
Aaron Levie:
- No, we are not super open to it. We have, we, we, you know, pre pandemic we had, I'm, I'm gonna make up a number, maybe about 20% of, of folks that were remote and, you know, kind of the typical roles that you'd expect field sales folks working with customers in the, in the field, you know, certainly, you know, situations where we had a, a great engineer maybe move somewhere, or where there was just some extremely unique talent we had to get. And pandemic happened, obviously we, we we got very flexible probably at times. Too flexible. And we're, we're having to kind of reel some of that back in and, and now we're, you know, now that things have settled down, we're we're still, you know, primarily hub based. And then we, we have, you know, I don't know, maybe again now 30% of the population might be remote or something like that. So it's certainly an increase pre pandemic. But we're, we, were really, you know, trying to bring people back in the office and, and do that quite a bit more. I've, I've studied, you know, lots of the companies that are, that are fully remote or, or, you know, kinda remote leaning. It's fantastic. It's not for me, but I think what's great about, you know, capitalism is like everybody gets to try their version of, of building a company in the way that they want and that it's just not my sort of style per se. So, so yeah, that post was unfortunately that, that it hit me right in the stomach.
Immad Akhund:
- But you're not even that remote. So that post was bullshit.
Aaron Levie:
- But, but, but like, I, I, you know, you know, hopefully it's like an anecdote of like one person out there, you know, I'd hope it's not, not too significant, but, but I, you know, it pains me, you know, on, on a couple dimensions. One primarily just being, because there's so many people that are working insanely hard every single day, especially people working insanely hard, getting paid less than what was sort of cited in that, in that tweet. And, and so I just, I just think from a fairness standpoint, it's, it's sort of, you know, you, you hate to see it when there's just so much to get done. You know, people, people working 10, 12 hours, you, you know, a day and, and then there's somebody out there coasting. I, I just, I don't like it from a, a principal standpoint.
Raj Suri:
- Yeah.
Aaron Levie:
- And you know, I've heard, I've had, I've heard anecdotes, not so much at Box, but other companies where, where there's people in those situations, they actually don't prefer to even be in that situation they want more to do. And so they're kind of just doing whatever's being asked of them and it happens to be a low amount. And in those situations, you know, my, my plea would just be like, like sign up for more stuff. Like, come talk to me or your manager or somebody because we have like an insane amount to get done.
Immad Akhund:
- So I actually don't think it's a question of not being enough work, given enough work. So I I, I'm kind of embarrassed to admit it, but the first job I had, I was at Bloomberg. And I basically was a quiet quitter. I worked there for a year and I just found it so unmotivating, you would get like handed this like spec, you would never talk to any customers. It was like, go implement it. And I was like, okay, I'll do it in two months and it would take me like two weeks to do it. And I, and then I would still get like a promotion at the end of the year. So, because all you, all you have to do to get promotions is like, sound good in meetings. That literally was the job. But I mean, I feel like, I think actually that's like the core of it. And I was, that was an in office thing, so I don't think this is like remote versus an office. Like you can slack in either situation. I think it's mostly about motivation and culture and like giving like meaningful work to people. Yeah. And that is hard to do as a company scales. Like, it is hard to like keep that culture and motivation.
Aaron Levie:
- Yeah, I agree. I, so I, you know, I can't speak to the Bloomberg thing, so, but on the office versus not an office, you know, I, I do think there's one, you know, there is a little bit of an element though of when you're around people who, who you see working on interesting stuff and they're, they're working on a, on a really, you know, compelling project or they came up with an idea to push some boundary forward. That, that I think there's a, there is absolutely a contagious effect of that on, on, on just working more, working harder. I, you know, my, my maybe counter experience to that would be when we started Box, I was 10 times more motivated because I had co-founders than we lived and worked in a room together. And if I was, if I was simply just on my own, just knowing my own myself, this is again, not, not a not a categorical, you know, point, but knowing myself, if it was just me and all I was accountable was just to myself, there's no way I would've been working 16 hours and just, you know, grinding out the, the next update, the next feature idea, the next product strategy. But there's a contagious sort of network effect of that. And, you know, can you replicate that virtually a hundred percent? Like, like clearly I, some companies have been able to do that. There's obviously software that helps you do that. Is it a lot easier to rep, like, you know, create that just in a, in a physical work environment? I think so. So like, like why work against gravity when, when, you know, you can just get a lot of people into a room and that sort of almost is become self propelling. That's kind of the thing I've, I've kind of bent, you know, bet on. And, and I, I just see it, you just, you walk around and you see people, you know, collaborating on ideas and, and you know, like discovering that there's some something that they were missing in some meeting. And now that they connected the dots on that just, it was very hard to, you know, replicate in a perfectly, you know, completely virtual environment. So, but again, this is just like, you know, there, there's always been these religious wars well before Covid. I mean, we, we used to all, you know, fight about this on, on Twitter back in the day, but like, like I have no opinion about how anybody should run their company. This is just an opinion about how we wanna run our company. And, and I think there's like, you know, there's so many different approaches.
Raj Suri:
- Yeah. Don't you, don't you guys feel though that there is, I used to feel this, you know, and you know, when Presto was at a later stage as well, that I had to create some sense of emergency for the company at all times. And like, if there wasn't a sense of emergency, people would automatically coast.
Aaron Levie:
- Yeah.
Raj Suri:
- Like, it is just a natural thing. People automatically, people have other things to do. They, they focus on other parts of their life, but there has to be something, there has to be the next deal. You gotta win. And this deal is like a make or break. We have an arch rival there that we have to beat, right? Like
Immad Akhund:
- Yeah. And I, I heard that's true about Stripe culture as well. Like, I, I heard that a lot of, like, the drive is like, there's always like some existential sounding Yeah.
Raj Suri:
- Elon does this all the time. Elon's always like, he's doing it for the country right now. He's like, the country's gonna go bankrupt.
Aaron Levie:
- Literally he got like, if you, you can actually like track the ratcheting up of the existential, you know, nature of things. It was like, first it was like, you know, climate change is gonna destroy us. Then it was multi-planetary, you know, species. And now it's literally like maybe democracy is at stake. Yeah. It's like, oh my God. Like we, like the crises only get bigger.
Immad Akhund:
- Have you ever tried that at Box, Aaron? Like is it, is it, agency like kind of...
Aaron Levie:
- Only ones that I actually like, literally believe are true. And it makes them, it makes it way, you know, way more, you know, I think sustainable and, and meaningful to sell. But, but I think it's, it is actually literally true for all of us. Like we, we don't, you don't almost don't have it like, like manufacturers probably even the wrong word as much as just like, like pick a crisis and tell everybody about it. And, and, and you know, kind of like, you know, hone in on, on the, the fact that there is one, because actually maybe by default nobody realizes that there is a always a crisis as a startup and there's actually a crisis of, of a company of any scale. Like Sundar has a crisis right now. Yeah. Like, there is no company that is, that is, you know, too big.
Immad Akhund:
- And the tricky thing though is like, you know, at a bigger company, people are working on all sorts of things. So like, can you directly contribute to this one crisis is like probably trickier, right? Like, it's hard to have...
Aaron Levie:
- That's why you make it more existential and then everybody, and then it transcends anybody's individual project. So, you know, the, the the, the bigger the...
Immad Akhund:
- What is like the most recent thing like that for Box?
Aaron Levie:
- Well, so I mean now, now I'm actually like, there's a crisis of this Deedy post, [Laughs]
Immad Akhund:
- But that's boring.
Aaron Levie:
- So, you know, for, for us, there's always been, you know, this element of, you know, we're a horizontal software company. We sell to enterprises. Unfortunately, we chose one of the, the basically, you know, we believe, you know, more important categories of, of data to, to manage for an enterprise. And so like if you just add up, okay, you're horizontal, you're going after large enterprises, you're going after a critical data set. Well, like the crisis is that there's always gonna be insane competition that is always going to be trying to also get that data set and also be the best place for an enterprise to manage their information. So, so I again, you know, maybe made a, you know, big mistake in the category choice of like, like we chose a category that will always have intense competitive dynamics, and we will always have to move faster, innovate better, get more product out, do it in a, in hopefully a more thoughtful and kind of seamless way than the competition. But it's, but you know, nothing has ever, you know, kind of come easily in, in this space. I, I, you know, I often just like, like think about how amazing it would be just to do like vertical software. Like, you know, you just, like, you, you go and pick, pick apart some category that like, you know, the incumbent is from the eighties and they just haven't woken up to like, digital transformation. And we, we didn't do that, so my bad. But, but like we're, we're,
Raj Suri:
- You have other problems when you do vertical software, you, I don't, you know how to market size.
Aaron Levie:
- Yeah, yeah. You like, but like, you look at like Veeva and like, you know, I think, you know, somehow...
Immad Akhund:
- You're cherry picking Aaron, it's like the most successful company, like the four years VCs have been like shoveling money to every competitor and vertical SaaS you can like think of...
Aaron Levie:
- Alright, fine. I do have like a survivorship bias problem. So by the way, is it really hard to be in vertical software?
Raj Suri:
- Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's, it, it's, it's probably easier to get early traction because you, you're not competing with the big boys, but, but also the markets are much smaller and we, we face the reo we ran outta market, you know, you, you start leading the markets outta restaurants to sell. You ran outta customers. Yeah, we ran outta make a restaurant chain to sell to.
Aaron Levie:
- But respectfully you did choose one of the harder verticals. So like, like the, when I'm talking verticals, I'm just saying like, you know, biopharma like, like they got unlimited money, maybe not now in this administration, but like normally they have unlimited money.
Raj Suri:
- Yeah, that's true.
Aaron Levie:
- And, and, and they need to automate way more. I mean that you, you, your stuff was fragmented. It, you know, kind of complicated buying environment now.
Immad Akhund:
- The problem is whenever something is easy, a founder will make it hard for themselves. So like, if it's easy, they'll like, you know, try to expand and try to get bigger, like grow the pan. It's, it's, it's never like you're just gonna sit on it.
Aaron Levie:
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's, we, we do, we do kind of event new problems.
Raj Suri:
- Well, I mean, that's what I mean, the market also want growth, right? You gotta grow at a certain rate. So, you know, once you're starting, that's the thing, when you see the market ceiling, you're like, oh, I gotta come up with my second act, you know, and like third act, fourth act and we were doing like four or five different products at some point, you know, so Yeah, you have to do that. You have no choice.
Aaron Levie:
- Yes, yes. That, that's totally fair. So okay, fine. So maybe the grass is not greener, but yeah. But, but yeah, so for us, we've always had, you know, this, this kind of in, in the back of, you know, in the back of our heads, this incessant need for just more, more urgency. We have to move faster. We're gonna have, we have to out compete, you know, the, the, you know, everybody out there
Immad Akhund:
- Does the new AI stuff, kinda like the new technology development also create urgency? Like you need to launch things in this space before, like your competitors do it and try to own it.
Aaron Levie:
- I think about a little bit less as we have to be first per se, only because especially in something like ai, there's, there's so much you can learn from actually watching the, the, the space a a little bit. See what is kind of working, what people are adopting. I, you know, we, we, we did happen to be first and we, we are happening to, to continue to triple, you know, down on all things because the learning cycle is so much faster, the, the earlier you get into these things. But, but, but weirdly, like, I don't think just getting anything out there, no matter what it is, is, is, you know, a good strategy in, in this particular kind of, you know, market. I think actually having a very thoughtful strategy, one that you directionally have a very sort of strong hypothesis in, that's probably more important than anything. And, and so that, that's mostly what we've been focused on. So I want like a few selective, extremely high leverage bets. We don't need to be doing, you know, kind of everything. First we have a couple areas that we've said we're gonna lead in AI around how, how you work with your content and your, and we're just gonna be hyper-focused on that. And then we're gonna, you know, get compounding returns from just, you know, the lessons reinvest back into, to what's working. But, but there is, you know, a high degree of urgency simply because you could miss this window and wake up one day and, and, you know, realize you didn't do enough or you didn't make the right decisions. And then, and quite literally, I do think it's existential.
Raj Suri:
- Yeah. You know, one other thing that I've, I've realized that actually works really well to motivate people, back to your point, Immad, about like, you know, you were motivated at Bloomberg, it just give people like a ton of responsibility, way more responsibility than actually makes sense. And, and the mission. So it, it should feel uncomfortable for, for people. And, and the good people will rise to that and they'll, they'll, they'll embrace it and, and others will, will shy away from it and they'll say, no, this is way too much. Right. But it's, you know, I think I, I kind of learned this from like early Steve Jobs videos where he would like tell people at Apple, like, you know, this whole thing, this demo rides on you. This, this like one, you know, the success of this thing rides on you. And it, it gave people like, you know, nightmares, right? Yeah.
Aaron Levie:
- Yeah. And I think, I think that there's an element, we, we, we, you know, I think we're all lucky to be on the up upswing of, of, you know, kind of economic trends with, with, you know, being in tech. So this, you know, I say this with, with some degree of, of, you know, humility and, and, and self-awareness on that. But like, I do think like the mission of what you're trying to do matters, you know, doing something that's exciting. I, you know, can't speak to your Bloomberg experience, but, but like, you know, we all, we all are benefiting from the fact that like, you know, we're working, you know, generally if you're in tech, you're working on interesting problems that, that if, if, you know, that don't like, have to get solved unless you literally as a company do them and, and you know, hopefully that they're aligned to kind of important topics so that, that, you know, kind of gives you that self-propelling, I think energy in a lot of cases that maybe don't exist in, in some organizations where it is sort of like, what's one more research report gonna do, you know, whether it takes a month or two months, you know, same things are gonna happen in the world. So I do think that there's an element of like, you, you know, as a founder, you do have to kind of cult, you know, figure out why if this doesn't get done, you know what, what's, what's not gonna then, you know, sort of happen the same way in the world. Why is your company, you know, so important? Why does it have to exist? And, and it's, I think it's important, you know, to try and find that, and, you know, you brought, you know, Stripe as an example. Like it's a pretty compelling concept, like we're gonna increase the GDP of the internet. So like big idea, everybody can kind of see how they ladder up to that, that, you know, concept. You know, Elon has, has perfectly nailed this at every single venture, obviously. So, so, so I think it, it kind of behooves founders to also figure out what are they, you know, what are they attached to that that is, that, that's incredibly important. And then one, one other interesting thing on the urgency thing is, and this is, you know, a lot of people, lot, lot of lot, there's a lot of challenges with being, there's no question, but one thing that that kind of comes included with being public is you, you kind of automatically get some urgency just due to the fact that every quarter, you know, you're, you're on the, you know, your your, your numbers are gonna be on the line. And in the, you know, in a private company, you, you know, people basically perceive, well, maybe our VCs will get mad or, or whatnot, but it's sort of like low, low impact, low visibility to the average, you know, sort of employee that's,
Immad Akhund:
- Most people complain about that. Like they say, that creates a short term kind of mindset and things like that. But you think it's actually like it creates urgency.
Aaron Levie:
- I think that on the whole, on the whole, the, the benefit of that urgency, I think exceeds the cost of the near term sort of orientation that it creates. So there's no question that, that it does, it can have an impact on, on, on near term decisions. I actually think that the near term element of that though is more owned by the, the, you know, the, the, the CEO or executive team and maybe the board of directors, because that's usually about capital allocation decisions. That's like, should we build this project or that project one will take way longer. One could, you know, you know, be much more important in the short run. I don't think that's like the a like the daily experience of, of an employee is, is sort of these long short trade offs. And so the, the, the benefit though of the, the public piece is that everybody understands that like, oh shit, like on November 1st we're reporting earnings, like I better, you know, have close that deal or I better have, you know, deliver that feature. 'cause that's gonna be in the, you know, that, that's gonna be very visible to everybody. So, so I, I, I think on the whole it, you sort of get the benefit of, of that urgency by being public now, a lot of other downsides and challenges, but that you have to kind of factor in. But, but I think the, the pressure can be pretty helpful.
Immad Akhund:
- How distracting is it to have a public company? Like what percentage of your time are you talking to public investors versus like running the company?
Aaron Levie:
- I, it's a, um it actually, it's probably, it will seem like a larger number. It doesn't feel like as large of a number as it is. But you know, you have, I think probably in total, if I added it all up, maybe let's say four to four days of time, a quarter, I'm, you know, kind of, you have the earnings call, you have the follow up calls, you have the analyst meetings, and then maybe you have one IR conference and then a couple other, other investor meetings scattered through.
Immad Akhund:
- So, so like about 8% ish.
Aaron Levie:
- Hmm, 8%?
Raj Suri:
- Forcing him to do math.
Immad Akhund:
- I'm doing the math in my head. 1 week every 12 weeks.
Aaron Levie:
- I wouldn't say one week though. And I would, I would also, and I would, I would also say that you're gonna get more than 12 weeks.
Immad Akhund:
- Maybe fiveish percent, which between five to eight.
Aaron Levie:
- Eight would be like, whoa, okay, we'll use, something's gone horribly wrong. So, but...
Immad Akhund:
- But you said it's not as, as bad it seems because…?
Aaron Levie:
- Because, because, okay, so half the time, half the time is very rote. Like you're reading a script, you're saying that the, the prepared lines, all, all that, so let's say, let's say half of the four or 5% is, is kind of like, you know, literally an AI could do it. There's no, there's no question you could just train an ai, it'd be done. The other half you're getting signal, like you're, you're, you're, you're sort of like, oh, you're, you keep talking about, you know, gross margin in this way or retention metrics in this way, or you heard from this, this company, you know, they're doing this and you kind of, that just gets, you know, put into your, your overall, you know, LLM and and you might pull, you know, recall that for some other future thing, like we had, we had a, a fairly, you know, non-consequential probably to this investor meeting like three and a half years ago where he just said, Hey, you should look at this one company that does this capital allocation thing. And, you know, maybe to him, he probably said that line to 50 companies. To me, that was the first time I had heard that. And I, we went and studied it and we're like, oh shit. Like, okay, this is actually like a pretty good approach and that, that sort of set us on off on a trajectory for, for our overall capital allocation strategy. Now, would we have gotten there through other conversations? Eventually, yes. But, but, but it was at a really interesting kind of jumpstart, you know, lit a little a match on the whole thing, also yes. And, and that's the signal you get by talking to people that study everybody else's metrics all day long. And you don't have to, you, you don't have to do that. And so you just get to talk to people and they can point you into interesting directions. So I think you can, if you kind of flip it and you say, okay, what can I get from this that helps the company? Then you can take at least the, you know, the two, you know, 2% of that time and turn it into something strategically valuable. I guess just from a pure like, you know, your job, like, like, you know, the, if you just like think about the, the flywheel of, of, if I can ensure investors are better educated on the strategy, then hopefully that means that there'll be more investors or they'll be more supportive of the stock. If that happens, then there's a higher, a higher, you know, a higher share price if that happens, than our equity is worth more for employees. Like, that is another part of my job is to make sure that, that we have valuable equity that, that people, you know, are, are excited to work here and, and so on. So, so like, you know, technically, you know, you are doing directly impactful work for, for the company Now, do you, you know, again, could you imagine another world where somebody was just talking to an AI and getting the same answers? Sure. But we're, you know, for social reasons, we're not there yet.
Raj Suri:
- I dream of the day where fundraising and investor conversations are much easier and more efficient for founders. You know, like it's, it seems ridiculous to me. Like these very important and you know, people whose time is very valuable. Yeah. They're spending all this time repeating the same conversation to investors over and over again. I'm, you've been through this, right? Like, it's not fun at all and it feels like maybe an AI could do it, or maybe you just do a recording, like do a Loom.
Aaron Levie:
- I'm surprised that the, I was gonna throw this out to our IR team, but I'm surprised that there's, as far as I can tell, there's not yet been an AI generated earnings call that, that I know of. And like, like that would be, it would be, that'd be pure novelty. Yeah. But like, it's, it would be trivial. You'd just give it my script and, you know, and with 10, 10 seconds of fine tuning, you know, you'd have my voice and boom, you're, you're, you know, you have an earnings call. So like that would, that would at least save me 20 minutes.
Immad Akhund:
- Did Tobi at Shopify do a thing where he ran an all hands company meeting and he, at the end he was like, oh, it's actually all AI that, that wrote this and, and did all this?
Aaron Levie:
- I didn't even see that. Holy. Oh wow. Okay.
Immad Akhund:
- This was a while ago.
Aaron Levie:
- Was it on video or, or was just pure audio?
Immad Akhund:
- Oh, I think he, I think it was mostly the script was written by AI. I think he was still saying the script. It would've been even more fun.
Aaron Levie:
- See, I see. Okay. But, but you could probably, I bet you could pull off video. You could, you can do that 80%.
Immad Akhund:
- I mean, that's been extremely convincing, like this kind of zoom call, like we could easily all be AIs right now. It would, it would be extremely convincing.
Aaron Levie:
- No, no, I mean there's, it's say 45 minutes. It's not obvious that you guys are actually there right now. That's right.
Immad Akhund:
- That's right. Do you, what's your, take Aaron on kind of this AI supercycle, do you think it's like a real supercycle or do you think it's kind of over, over its skis hype? Like where are you on the overhyped versus correctly hyped kind of?
Aaron Levie:
- I, you know, I I, I don't have any non-consensus views on this. I think it's one of these, we will look back and there'll be some crazy projects and like, wow, I can't believe that company got half a billion dollars to train that model. And then, and then we will be like, oh, we totally missed this like, you know, supply chain automation thing that became $20 billion. So, so, so I, I suspect that, you know, you could probably just be safe by doing an index of AI investing wake up in 10 years. And, and that asset class is just worth more because it, it would be, you know, impossible to, to conceive that that, you know, we have, you know, significant actual artificial intelligence that, that actually can do real work and we don't find incredible applications for it, you know, on our end, you know, just the, just the ability to give something a document. And I'm sure you, you see this a bit actually in both of your guys' worlds, but, you know, you give something a document and you extract the, you know, entities from that and the, and the structured metadata, and now all of a sudden we can automate a workflow that previously was manual, right?
Immad Akhund:
- And that stuff is here, right? It's not like it's already, we need another AI for it.
Aaron Levie:
- We don't, we don't need another model. You know, it's, I actually, I, I wouldn't want it to slow down because we could just make it way cheaper, but like for the vast majority of documents, we can already solve that problem today. AI could stop right now and you'd probably solve, you know, I don't know, like a hundred billion hours a year of work and if we just did that, but the good news is not slowing down and, and so it'll only get better. But, but like, this is like, that's like non speculative. It's very, very boring. Like everybody has to do that exact task and it can automate, you know, a significant degree of, of these back office kind of workflows and it's like here today. So, so that's obviously pretty exciting that, that we, you know, this has been a, this has been a problem since we started the company that everybody has come to us, you know, every day since founding the company, kinda give you content, can you pull out the data from it? Can I put that into a database? And we're like, sure, for the low price of like a million dollar consulting experience, you know, we can totally do that. And now you can just do it and AI can just do it. So, so I think I, I think, you know, this, this is, this will only get bigger, you know, it's, it's, you know, tough to look at some of these categories where you do have like the 17th, you know, coding assistant product. Like, you know, some of those things are just not gonna survive. But I think we, we've always seen that in, in any new category, you're always gonna see a race where, where, where, you know, 10 different companies try the same idea. We'll see which one works better. The whole category will probably, you know, on a net basis, you know, be a, be, you know, perform well. Some people will lose, some people will win, you know, way more.
Immad Akhund:
- You've been quite vocal about Web3 and, and you didn't believe that would be a thing, right? A few years ago. And, and now it's like crypto seeing a, a resurgence. I was wondering what you think of that.
Aaron Levie:
- You know, so I, I wanna be very precise. Bitcoin, I basically was always indifferent to, I made some Bitcoin jokes, I traded in and outta Bitcoin over the years and, and, and, but like Bitcoin is like, listen, if everybody wants to believe in digital gold, I, I, you know, I didn't, I, you know, that's actually just like totally, they like it. Like there's nothing that doesn't make sense about that. At least like gold is, you know, some people will argue with, you know, it's got some material, you know, use cases, but like for the most part, it's just something we've all bought into as like this shared thing that we all agree on the value on. So if there's one digital version of that totally makes sense. And so in this way I'm actually like probably closely aligned to Bitcoin maxis, like, like that's pro I would probably be like a toxic, toxic Bitcoin maxi, like in another life. And so I actually can understand that philosophy, which is like, guys, we just need one shared store value we all agree on, and like, we're all gonna be bought into. Where I I got lost was when we started talking about crypto as like a data store for non-financial objects. And that, that was, that was just basically where I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. And, and partly, partly was I just wanted to fully understand it myself of how this would play out. The other part was I didn't want to get to a point where people would be like, Hey, should you store your files on the blockchain? And like me not understand like, is that a good idea or a bad idea? Like I better like really think this through. And as, as we thought, as I thought it through and, and you know, talked to, you know, lots of, lots of friends on it, like became very obvious that this, like the vast majority of these ideas were just bad ideas. Like you don't need to bootstrap a network effect with through financial, you know, incentives because you're gonna have a lot of people join that network for, for the financial incentive, not for the utility that will, you know, automatically kind of, you know, make the utility of the underlying service be be kind of artificially propped up that could go away at any moment, the moment that there's no kind of financial upside. And so that was my concern, was there was all these ideas, like everything's gonna become this sort of Web3 financialized network for non inherent financial use cases. Like you don't need there to be a, you don't need there to be a, a, a a, a trading environment for, for just like storing, you know, data in a trustless way. Like that's just not, like, we don't, we don't need that. Like we already have, you
Immad Akhund:
- Know, I mean, maybe for data where you're worried about censorship, but that's,
Aaron Levie:
- I don't know why that needs to be, I don't know why that needs to become a token though. Like, like we could just all agree that like, let's just, let's just have a trustless, you know, you could even
Immad Akhund:
- Be a blockchain, which is what Tor is.
Aaron Levie:
- Yeah, yeah. So like, like, like, I don't know why that asset needs to go up and down based on people tweeting, you know, you know, a token. So like, like, so that was my issue was like, like the more I studied that like wow, like the, the, you know, the, the crypto day trader types that are like, oh, we're all gonna swarm this social network and like all by the tokens and then they're gonna, you know, shoot up. It's like, no. Like you've just automatically now ruined the chance of that social network from being, being viable because, because, you know, you obviously are there for the wrong reasons. And I saw this in the, in the nineties and the early two thousands, there were lots of these things, like there used to be this, this, you know, these apps where you would have, you'd download software that would show you banner ads while you browse the internet and gave you like free internet access and you know, all these like incentive schemes that were financial to like get you to do things. And then, you know what, what, what happened three months later, people built bots that would just.
Immad Akhund:
- Isn't there like a principle or paradox or something about like how incentives are like, not how you get people to do things?
Aaron Levie:
- Totally.
Immad Akhund:
- I think there's like so much danger in it. That was always the weird thing about crypto. Like, people like, we'll incentivize this behavior with money. And I was like, that's the worst way to incentivize behavior.
Aaron Levie:
- Well, no, hundred percent. And, and like there were like early theories of like, well imagine if Airbnb had had a token and it's like, guys, like Airbnb worked, like it didn't need a, like, like it's like a hundred billion dollar company. Like, it, like it didn't, like you just proved it like, no, actually, like you can just have a marketplace. Like, I have a thing, somebody wants that thing, there's a middleman. They, they, you know, enabled the transaction. Like they didn't need a, another, another sort of orthogonal financial incentive, a la a token to get involved. Anyway, so I I that's a long meandering way of saying like the Web3 of Web3, I didn't buy into.
Immad Akhund:
- I guess this relates to this, like...
Aaron Levie:
- Everybody should do whatever they want with Bitcoin is my, is my official statement. So.
Immad Akhund:
- You know, obviously you could just be quiet about this and form an opinion, like why tweet tweet slash X these things, like what's, you know, do you just like talk about it publicly because it's fun for you? Or is there like a strategy behind why?
Raj Suri:
- You wanted to piss off the Andreessen guys.
Aaron Levie:
- I mean, this is more of a question for like a psychoanalyst. I don't like, probably some, well,
Immad Akhund:
- I'm sure you've thought of about every single time you open your a Twitter app and it's like, why am I doing this?
Aaron Levie:
- I do think that, but I think, you know, pro probably it's, you know, it's it's sort of some spectrum kind of behavior probably.
Immad Akhund:
- It's not a grand strategy?
Aaron Levie:
- Yeah, there's no, there's no grand strategy. I just, I have to like, like I used to just like, like complain to like, like family members about like, why are people doing this? And then it was like, my family members like, just like, don't want to hear about it anymore. So, so I have to find like another outlet to complain to.
Raj Suri:
- I love Aaron's tweets. Immad, you're too neutral on Twitter. You gotta be more spicy. You gotta come up with, you know...
Immad Akhund:
- I mean, I honestly, I'm just a fairly neutral person. Like, I'm like, I get this side, I get that side, like, you know, and like nuance doesn't work on, on social media if I'm like, Hey, here's like the two sides and I kind of get them, but they're both wrong in these ways. Like, no one cares about that.
Aaron Levie:
- No, no. I believe any side that I'm not on is, is completely wrong. So, so, and yeah.
Immad Akhund:
- I mean it's also, you know, I did Twitter slash LinkedIn in a much more deliberate way in 2016. I was like, I'm gonna start Mercury and I want to go reach as many founders as possible because that'll be the audience. And it worked. I would say like that was actually a successful strategy. But, but it does, like, it doesn't come naturally to me to be like loud and annoying on the internet.
Aaron Levie:
- To be, to be very, oh, did you say annoying?
Immad Akhund:
- No.
Raj Suri:
- He was saying he wasn't annoying.
Immad Akhund:
- I meant it in a nice way, Aaron.
Aaron Levie:
- I mean, to be clear, I don't like recommend this as like a comm strategy. This is just like, I have to have an outlet. If it wasn't X it'd be something else. So Yeah.
Raj Suri:
- And I, I get it. I get it. And I, I love, I love your tweets on politics. I actually think you're like the prototypical Silicon Valley, CEO right? Like kind of leans, you know, you want social progress, but you want business friendly government, right? So that's why I kind of look to you as like a north star, you know, your tweets on this and Well, I mean, you think, think is like the political North Star? I think so. I think so.
Aaron Levie:
- As proven by this election, I'm literally not the North Star.
Raj Suri:
- Well, but for Silicon Valley CEOs, I think most Silicon Valley CEOs probably thought the way you thought is kind of the way I think, but don't express it. You know, like in in private meetings the people would talk like you, but like you're the only one saying it publicly. Right?
Immad Akhund:
- So what did Aaron say about this election?
Raj Suri:
- You didn't follow his tweets?
Aaron Levie:
- I said, I said Jill Stein's gonna win. Yeah, I mean this election was, was was wild. Trump just sort of brings out something from me of just like, oh my, and then like, and, and unfortunately it literally is just like, it's just, it's fully TDS like, it's like I understand that that that it's, it's caused by something that's been, you know, kind of just manufactured in my head of just like to, you know, reflexively respond to anything that's happening. But I did make a decision that post this election, I would not do the kind of 2016 version of that resistance and Yeah, exactly. Just 'cause this is like, life's too short. I don't have the time for it. Like, and also there's just a lot that we have to get done as a country. So I was like, okay, during the election season, I'll, I'll share my thoughts on, on, you know, the what, what, what, what I think should happen post-election. Like it's just time to bring things together, let's move forward. And so that's kind of been my mo and I, I will admit that there's totally things that I, well not, I mean like, like this not like a profound, you know, admission, but the, like the Democrats suck right now on like so many different topics. So, so it, it's very, it's very tough trying to like, to like justify and, and support a number of these things. So I, I mean the social stuff brings, pulls me back just 'cause I'm, I'm obviously, you know, kind of not obviously, but like I'm more socially aligned to, to Democrats, but, but the, but it's just tough how much they really wanna shoot themselves in the foot on these far left kind of topics. And it's painful because, because they're just not tracking to, you know, probably where most of the country is.
Raj Suri:
- They're just not super business savvy, right? It is just, it feels like, you know, like Kamala great person, but you know, seemed like a nice lady, but she had no, never worked in the private sector. You could tell like she just not confident talking about the economy.
Immad Akhund:
- I think that's a part of it. But they're also like such gaslight. Yeah, like the, you know, the, I was just thinking about earlier, remember the inflation reduction act, which like a hundred percent of people were like, this is gonna cause inflation and then it inflation and it was literally called inflation reduction act. Like I think everyone said kind of forgotten about it. But like those types of things just make you think like, wow, what can I even believe these people say.
Aaron Levie:
- To be, to be fair, to be fair, I think both sides will gaslight you. So the, I don't, I don't think that is, no, nobody has a monopoly on gaslighting. It, it, you know, one does it in a more expensive fashion. So, so, so I, I agree that like the, the ticket price of the gaslighting on the Democrat side is, is higher. I, I would say that I think the business savviness is, is definitely, you know, that that's probably one of my top issues. But, but you know, we, we do have other issues in the, in the Democrat party. Like, like they, you know, they don't know how to, to think about, you know, let's say the Israel, Gaza, you know, con conflict dynamics. They don't know how to, you know, handle, you know, homelessness and crime in, in a lot of kind of urban areas. We, we've just sort of seen this play out. So I think there's, there's a bunch of these topics that lost, you know, kind of like, you know, one faction at a time and I, I could see it in, in, you know, certain friend groups where you're just like, oh, like, like you're super pro science, you're super pro, you know, biotech or your super pro, you know, advanced innovation. Like these are like things that I would normally think of 10 years ago as like, obviously like that's a shoo in for, for Democrat. And then boom, this one topic is just like, I think the party's just completely gone, gone bonkers. And now I'm, I'm, I'm leaning right or I'm voting for Trump. And that, that happened enough times in the past, you know, kind of year or two that, that at first it was like very obvious Biden was just going to definitely lose like, like, like the fact that that was happening. I thought Kamala had a, you know, a chance 'cause new, new energy in the, in the, in the party, a chance to maybe move more to the center, different advisors, but, but you know,
Immad Akhund:
- You just didn't have enough time. Like I think if they had put it in a year earlier, yeah, there was at least a chance
Raj Suri:
- There. I think it would've been tough, you know, like I think the inflation was so tough for the last few years. I think a lot of voters were just not happy.
Aaron Levie:
- I think you do have to, you know, the, the, the tricky thing on the Kamala campaign is, is is that, you know, it is sort of, you know, hard for the public to fully understand what does she, you know, what does she fundamentally believe on some of these key topics. And I had a lot of faith that things had moved more to the center due to, due to the kind of advisors that, that she was building policy folks. But unless you kind of get out there and either disavow certain things or, or really clearly articulate your, your updated beliefs, it's just gonna be challenging for people to kind of, you know, believe, believe certain, certain stuff. And then, and then on the Trump side, you know, you have this dynamic where, where, you know, Elon is a powerful force, you know, he brings, you know, some some degree of, of, of, of like a proxy for tech oriented stuff. You have, you know, you do have some of the economic indicators that, that we've been dealing with. You have a totally different, you know, campaign on the, on just the podcast thing. I think the podcast thing is, is is, you know, a super, a fundamentally symbolic difference of the campaigns is like, we're just gonna, one's just gonna get out there and talk to you and the other's gonna have kind of campaign slogans that, that, you know, kind of get out in various ways. That's like totally different campaign strategies. And so, so I don't know, it's not a hundred percent more time.
Immad Akhund:
- I feel the, that the podcast stuff was a huge difference. Raj doesn't think the podcast thing made a difference. Like your take on it is that it is like the future.
Raj Suri:
- Symbolically I think he's right.
Immad Akhund:
- Yeah, I think it's, I think it's the symbolism of, of the podcast. I don't think it's just symbolism. I think the, like, I, it's very hard for someone to talk for three hours and not communicate what they really think. Whereas like when you do these kind of scripted political things yeah, you can just be like, I have no idea what the, yeah. Politicians are super annoying about this. Like, you talk to them and you have literally no idea at the end what they, what they really believe because like they answered a bunch of scripted responses.
Raj Suri:
- That's a really good point they dodge a lot. Yeah,
Aaron Levie:
- Yeah. No, no. So, so, okay, sorry. Sorry, I don't wanna overweight the symbolic point. The, I think there is a difference when, I mean just like, obviously my, my X feed is, is, you know, heavily influenced by, by, you know, a few factors. But the, but like my X feed was basically like these like, you know, two minute or five minute clips of either JD or Trump, you know, on some podcasts saying something. Sometimes, you know, they like, people were making fun of them, but sometimes they were just like, like profound points and everybody, and like, like everybody was talking about that and, and you just, like, every day there'd be, there'd be new versions of that just flowing through on the, on the Harris campaign, it was kind of just like, like basically just little, like it would be a flub of, of Trump saying something and that just like runs out of, of potency. Like it's just like, yeah, we, we totally get that. He's gonna say these things. Like, like you just, it's like hard to get energized every day about that.
Immad Akhund:
- Yeah.
Aaron Levie:
- And there wasn't the reverse, so you didn't have the positive, you didn't have like, like nobody was sharing positives of the Harris campaign or Tim Walz saying this one really powerful, you know, answer to a question that was like, ah, that's really clever. Like, like, and so you just had a complete delta in, in sort of like, like it's funny 'cause everybody thought this was gonna be a vibes election on the Kamala side initially 'cause of these TikTok things, but it was equally a vibes election on the other side, which is just like, man, like Trump will just say these crazy things and he'll work at McDonald's and, and he says this thing on, on Aiden Ross or, or Theo Vaughn or, or you know, or you know, Lex Friedman or, and it's just like, you're just inundated with content and so it's, you can't compete with that if you're just doing slogans. So,
Immad Akhund:
- Yeah. Yeah. What's your, you know, in the spirit of kind of moving forward, what's your take on kind DOGE? Yeah. Like do you think it's gonna work or do you think it's like unlikely to like really move the needle much?
Aaron Levie:
- I'm probably more on the, on the bullish side. I mean bullish and if you, if you agree with the charter of, of of DOGE it's, it's more likely to work more than people who are, who don't think it will work believe.
Immad Akhund:
- Like what do you think will work? Like it'll save money or deregulate or both?
Aaron Levie:
- I think both. I think that I partly it's just like at some point, like if it's Elon's 10th thing that nobody thinks is gonna happen and like how many times do you got, how many times do you have to get proven wrong? Like as a society? Like, like, like no, there's no way that we're gonna have, you know, EVs that go more than, you know, 60 miles. Okay, okay. You're proven wrong. No, there's no way that we could like ever have reusable rockets. Okay. No, you're proven wrong. Okay. No, there's no way that like, somebody who is paralyzed is gonna be able to like, operate something with their brain. Okay, you're proven wrong. So, so at some point it's like, why do people keep wanting to be proven wrong? Like he's committed. It's like this is his soul, you know, sort of like channeling of energy right now. So, so one you've just got extremely high motivation. Vivek is, is probably another factor there. And then two, you know, the charter doesn't seem to be totally kind of outside the bounds of what you could do in an administration. Like could you, could you totally whack each agency and just say, you just have to get rid of this, like all of these taxing regulations and we're gonna, we're gonna reduce and we're gonna, we're gonna go at you legally or whatever. Like, seems, seems plausible and, and could you totally just be like, no, we're not gonna like spend that $10 million on this, this random project that is like not gonna produce something of, of course you could probably do that because you could put a massive spotlight on it. You could make it uncomfortable, you know, to, to kind of pursue that thing. Now I, you know, I think that they'll, they'll probably, they're gonna be met with a lot of, of, of friction. Some of that friction will be good because they, they, you could accidentally kinda overdo it and some of it will just be natural and I think the system will work through it. But, but I do think on the, on the positive side, like government size is like not one of my, my big things. So I don't really, I like, I have no strong opinion one way or another on the government needs to be smaller. I'm, I'm not like one of those people, so don't care. The thing that is a problem is, is the overburdensome kind of, you know, completely suffocating regulation and, and this is another very subtle factor.
Immad Akhund:
- Do you, do you feel that at Box or like you just see it...
Aaron Levie:
- No, we don't, but but all of our customers do and we, we like, you know, maybe, maybe, maybe the counter to my earlier griping about vertical SaaS is that like, I, I feel very fortunate to be in a space that doesn't deal with just these crazy, you know, just, you know, maze of, of complex regulations. We do serve, you know, regulated industries, so we have to deal with a lot of compliance and data privacy stuff, but that's manageable. The kind of regulation that, that is totally in the way of our success as a country is like, you know, building out energy sources, building out, you know, manufacturing plants, building out new forms of transportation, autonomous vehicles, you know, space, this, all the space, you know, regulation. So, so I do think that there's a lot of leverage if you kind of go through and say, Hey, there's like 10 strategic areas of an, of innovation in America for the next century. Let's make sure that we don't have, you know, major areas of friction in these, in these spaces. Let's actually let, let's accelerate in all these categories. That would be high upside. I totally think Elon has the Elon slash Vivek. They, they, they could pull that off if they, if they channel their energy into that. And that would be extremely high upside. Yeah.
Immad Akhund:
- I'm much more bullish on that than like trying to cut stuff to save some money. t's not that much money to be saved by...
Aaron Levie:
- I totally agree. I don't, I think that, I think the forest from the trees would be, if you could do, if you could do high leverage regulation reduction and sort of acceleration of projects, like somebody wants a nuclear reactor, you know, for a data center. Like we have a way of like getting that done. Somebody wants to build out a new chip, you know, manufacturing plant. Like we have a way of like passing through all the EPA stuff for like rapidly, like, we should just be building more. We should be, we should be, you know, starting more companies. We should, you know, we should get rid of any, I mean, you know, again, back to the unfortunately negative on the Democrats, like just even the unrealized capital gains thing, even that in the ether, it's just like, oh my God. Like, yeah. Like what does this mean for, are you guys actually like pro, you know, the, the, the tech economy? If, if you're even talking about this stuff. So like, get rid of all areas of friction. Let people build obviously with the right, you know, levels of protection for kind of, you know, kind of very, very, you know, dangerous or risky stuff. But like, we do have to get out of our own way on these topics.
Raj Suri:
- Yeah. Let me just say one thing that maybe the con, you know, a contrarian view on that. Yeah. Which is like, I think that makes sense in theory, but the way the American electorate works is that the moment that there's a problem with these things, like a, a regulation is cut and then there's a problem, you know, in nuclear, you point out nuclear, right. The, the American electorate itself is risk averse. Yeah. And they, they will not tolerate too much deregulation themselves unless it's sold to them as like, this is short-term pain for long-term game. And they understand that Elon has tried saying that, but he's not necessarily the best messenger for this. Right. So you need a very skilled politician to sell that constantly to the American people. Why this is good in the long term. Right. Because otherwise at the moment there's a financial crisis, remember the financial crisis of 2008? That's why we have so many financial regulations today. Cause the American public's like, I don't want this, you know, I don't want this type of thing to happen.
Aaron Levie:
- Yeah. So, so I think it behooves us on the, on the building side of, of those regulations to not to, to still be incredibly thoughtful and, and kind of safety oriented and build, you know, strong, highly governed companies and organizations. And so, like the proof point is you go to San Francisco and Waymos are everywhere and, and basically like probably the NPS of, of a Waymo user is like 90. Like, and, and like, it's just like very clearly like all net positive. Like this could be society in the future.
Raj Suri:
- But look at Cruise. I mean, like, you have one problem and, and like company gets shut down. Like it, so, but that,
Aaron Levie:
- But it got shut down because of the, because of the regulator with the right regulator, they would not have said Cruise is now the, the devil. Like, like let's put this in context of all crashes, right. That, that happen. And this is actually still, I
Immad Akhund:
- Think that's, that's like the key point that often people don't look at the counterfactual. It's like, you know, Vivek had a really good podcast he did, where he was like, imagine all the lives that did not get saved because the FDA did not approve things for an extra 10 years.
Aaron Levie:
- Yes.
Immad Akhund:
- Right. That's like millions of people who were affected by that.
Aaron Levie:
- Yeah. And this is, this is my issue with, with a lot of the AI regulation, you know, obviously it's impossible to know what SB1047 would've done. So like, we can't know, but like, but like, you know, right now, we should not be at the stage of creating friction in, in AI advancement specifically that point. Like, like it, you could never, you could never argue that, that like, people shouldn't have like an AI powered Khan Academy or tutor. Like every person on the planet should be able to like go to Gemini or ChatGPT or Perplexity or whatever, and just like ask a, a math question or a science question and get an answer back. Like, this is incredible that in, in the span of basically two years, you have like a superhuman tutor available on every phone on the planet. There's like, like that didn't have to happen. Like the, you know, one or two regulations could have prevented all of that. So, you know, we do actually have to be paying attention to what are we not getting by, by these regulations. And I agree that, that you need skillful politicians to be able to pull it off. Like there's no question. But, you know...
Immad Akhund:
- And skillful builders, I guess,
Aaron Levie:
- What's that?
Immad Akhund:
- And skillful builders...
Aaron Levie:
- Skillful builders to, and to not screw it up and not do the Theranos thing or not do the, you know, the FTX thing, like, like, you know, but unfortunately that will keep happening and
Raj Suri:
- That will keep happening. That's the thing.
Aaron Levie:
- Yeah. That will keep happening. And, and so I think maybe to all founders listening, like, just don't,
Immad Akhund:
- Don't be a Theranos.
Raj Suri:
- Don't screw it up for everyone
Aaron Levie:
- And, and don't, don't, don't get us overly regulated 'cause of your stupid antics, so.
Immad Akhund:
- Alright. Maybe that's a great point to stop. I feel like we could keep talking for a long time. Should have been a Joe Rogan type of podcast.
Raj Suri:
- Really good.
Aaron Levie:
- Alright guys, good to see you.
Raj Suri:
- Thanks everyone for listening. It was great to have you, Aaron. And you know, catch us next time on Founders In Arms Podcast and listen to us where you get your podcast.
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