Levie chose to research the online storage industry and instantly saw an attractive arbitrage opportunity.
FORBES: How The Kids At Box Are Disrupting Software's Most Lucrative Game
Levie jumped on his share of support calls, which proved the ultimate market-research exercise.
FORBES: How The Kids At Box Are Disrupting Software's Most Lucrative Game
Levie also launched a site called socalendar.com, a directory of events in the L.A. area.
FORBES: How The Kids At Box Are Disrupting Software's Most Lucrative Game
Levie finally found a believer in then 29-year-old Mamoon Hamid at U.S. Venture Partners.
FORBES: How The Kids At Box Are Disrupting Software's Most Lucrative Game
When I spoke with Levie recently, it was clear he had long-term visions for his company.
Mr. LEVIE: So it's not so much the act of spending money that bothers me.
Box, the office workers told Levie, was simpler to use than a similar Microsoft product called SharePoint.
FORBES: How The Kids At Box Are Disrupting Software's Most Lucrative Game
Mr. LEVIE: I've done all the calculations and I've figured out the routes that bypass the tolls.
Levie and Smith decided to drop out of their respective colleges and head to Silicon Valley, driving Mrs.
FORBES: How The Kids At Box Are Disrupting Software's Most Lucrative Game
Levie squeezed his way with a low-B average into the University of Southern California as a business major.
FORBES: How The Kids At Box Are Disrupting Software's Most Lucrative Game
Levie started Box.net in his dorm room at the University of Southern California.
The company is growing at a rate of 2.5 to 3x per year in its key segments, Levie says.
FORBES: Box Raises $125 Million, Targets International Markets
Mr. LEVIE: I grew up in New York City, so I feel like I know how to get around the city.
Levie would ask them what new features they wanted Box to add.
FORBES: How The Kids At Box Are Disrupting Software's Most Lucrative Game
Levie and others like him are selling communication tools, not accounting software.
Now Levie was asking them to dilute their stake by some 15%.
FORBES: How The Kids At Box Are Disrupting Software's Most Lucrative Game
Levie, focused on what was going on inside Box, had lost the perspective, gleaned from IT support calls, that had saved the company.
FORBES: How The Kids At Box Are Disrupting Software's Most Lucrative Game
Levie had sent the dot-com billionaire and blogger a story pitch.
FORBES: How The Kids At Box Are Disrupting Software's Most Lucrative Game
Levie and his freemium friends are doing away with all this.
Ms. NAMI SOWAJEMA (James Levie's wife): You also enjoy saving money?
In the current issue of Forbes Magazine we zoom in on Aaron Levie, the energetic and so young (at 27) co-founder and chief executive of Box.net.
Customers were signing up briskly, but Levie felt there was still too much friction in the act of pulling out a credit card to open a Box account.
FORBES: How The Kids At Box Are Disrupting Software's Most Lucrative Game
Levie turned himself into a student of enterprise software.
FORBES: How The Kids At Box Are Disrupting Software's Most Lucrative Game
Aaron Levie is chief executive and co-founder of Box.net, a cloud content management provider that he launched in 2005 with the goal of helping people access and share all their content online.
Levie built Box for this new world.
FORBES: How The Kids At Box Are Disrupting Software's Most Lucrative Game
Levie spent 2011 continuing his self-education.
FORBES: How The Kids At Box Are Disrupting Software's Most Lucrative Game
While incumbent software companies such as Microsoft, Oracle and IBM provide vertical solutions that include an end to end services for developers, Box is challenging them by offering what cofounder and CEO Aaron Levie calls an open system where developers can choose from a variety of providers and plug in to any of them.
FORBES: Box.net's Pitch To Developers: Box Innovation Network
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