Serial entrepreneurship is overrated: Whether it’s your first or seventh company, entrepreneurship is about choosing the right market at the right momentProduct is king: You can always layer sales on top of product-led growth (existing demand)When scaling a business, founders should directly solve fewer and fewer problems: Hire leaders to grow the business. Delegation allows founders to focus on their strengths & passions.

Startup Advice

Never hedge your bets as a company – if you have two paths, you have no paths. You have limited resources, don’t lower your ceiling with two allocations. Don’t split bets. Always have ambitious and idealistic goals that are balanced with reasonable accountabilityDo you want to be more like Amazon or Apple?Design and innovation are directly influenced by the architecture of your organization, it’s important to know your identityAmazon: Decentralized with an innovation focusApple: Centralized with a design focus

Place your biggest bet on a focused strategy and iterate 

Aaron’s opinions on the current state of the innovation market: High valuations create some inflationary pressure on software. Being overfunded can lead the product in the wrong direction.Network design comparison: Airbnb vs CryptoCrypto networks experience a value plateau as new participants have less and less upsideAirbnb users and hosts gain more value when the network grows, regardless of when you joined

Market Trends

 Aaron Levie is the Founder and CEO @ Box, the company incorporating the best of secure content collaboration with an intuitive user experience suited to the way people work today. Prior to their IPO in 2015, Aaron raised from some of the best in the business including the main man Mark Cuban, a16z, Emergence, DST, Coatue, DFJ and many more. Aaron founded the company from his dorm room at the University of Southern California and has led the company to 1,900 employees and over $770M in revenue, as of 2021 data.    In Today’s Episode with Aaron Levie You Will Learn:   1.) How Aaron founded Box from his dorm room at the University of Southern California? What was that founding a-ha moment? What did the first year look like? Does Aaron agree, "serial entrepreneurship is overrated"?   2.) Phases of Leadership and Company Growth:    How does Aaron define the different phases of leadership required as a company grows? Which phase did Aaron find the most challenging? How did he overcome it? What are the first things to break when companies grow? What can founders do to prevent this? Does Aaron agree, "the best CEOs are the best resource allocators"?    3.) The Market:    How does Aaron thinkj about the dislocation between private company valuations and public company market caps? What does Aaron believe are the biggest challenges founders face when they are over-capitalised? What does Aaron mean when he says, "raise when cash is cheap, spend as if it was expensive"? How does Aaron advise founders on fundraising today?    4.) The Team and Culture:    How does Aaron create a safe space where all team members can come to him with anything? How does Aaron approach effective goal setting? How does one balance between achieveable and also aggressive goals? How does Aaron approach the art of delegation? What is his decision-making framework for what to delegate vs what to control?     Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode with Aaron Levie   Aaron’s Favourite Book: Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change) 

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The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) interviews the world's greatest venture capitalists with prior guests including Sequoia's Doug Leone and Benchmark's Bill Gurley. Once per week, 20VC Host, Harry Stebbings is also joined by one of the great founders of our time with prior founder episodes from Spotify's Daniel Ek, Linkedin's Reid Hoffman, and Snowflake's Frank Slootman.   If you would like to see more of The Twenty Minute VC (20VC), head to www.20vc.com for more information on the podcast, show notes, resources and more.

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