Building for the Enterprise with Aaron Levie (How to Start a Startup 2014: Lecture 12)

TL;DR

Aaron Levie argues that the current era is the best time to build an enterprise software company, driven by cloud computing, user-led IT, and massive industry disruption. He recounts Box’s pivot from consumer to enterprise, emphasizing that the enterprise IT market (~$3.7 trillion annually) vastly outweighs consumer app and advertising spend.

Key insights

• The consumer software business model has limited monetization options (paid apps or advertising), while enterprise IT spends ~$3.7 trillion per year on servers, infrastructure, software, networking, a
• Enterprise software historically suffered from slow sales cycles (up to two years), complex user experiences, and reliance on sales intermediaries (“Chuck”).
• Three enabling technology changes made Box possible: dropping storage costs, more powerful browsers/networks, and multiple locations needing file sharing.