Cloud-storage company Box, led by 27-year-old CEO Aaron Levie, has proven that you can make enterprise software people actually want to use. Wired Business sat down with Levie to discuss what he's learned in the seven years since founding Box about building simple software, the growing importance of mobile, and the future of the cloud.
Wired: Companies that build enterprise software often struggle to make something simple that people actually want to use, as opposed to being forced to use some horrific software by their bosses or IT department. How did we end up there?
Aaron Levie: If you're an IT buyer you're looking to solve for some particular problem -- and the needs you have as an IT buyer can often vary greatly from the end-user or employee that needs to use the software. Security issues, integration issues, and all the controls and features you want as an IT person are going to be very different than the usability and the experience that the end-user would want. So most software that enters an organization isn't measured or rewarded by how easy it is to use. We found there was all this enterprise software that was incredibly hard to use because it simply didn't need to be easy for someone to make the sale.
Wired: You guys started as a consumer service. Did that consumer sensibility, even as you realized it was businesses who were your ideal customers, help you to keep everything simple?
"There was all this enterprise software that was incredibly hard to use because it simply didn't need to be easy for someone to make the sale."Levie: Absolutely. In the enterprise you didn't need to focus on simplicity, so thus it was never a priority for most of these organizations. But if you think about the consumer landscape, the only way to get to us (consumers) is to have better and simpler technology than the other guy. In order to stand out, achieve critical mass, and get adopted by consumers, our technology had to be very competitive on simplicity and openness, and let anyone get to their data on different devices. That has been the key to our adoption in the enterprise too.
Even though now, seven and half years later, we have 550 employees, we still have very much a design- and user-centric approach to how we build software. That's very different than many enterprise software companies because they just didn't start that way.
Wired: Every startup is product-focused, because at the beginning that's all you got – the thing you are building for the world to see and use. But it gets harder to have that laser-like focus on product as you get bigger. How have you been able to maintain your focus on product and on user experience as Box has grown?
Levie: First off, you need product managers that are very focused and motivated. You need world-class designers who have the raw talent to be able to make the product happen.
You need to try to avoid compromises as much as possible. We've spent a lot of time going to the 95th, the 98th, and the 99th percentile of that final optimization that most companies wouldn't do, because were trying to make sure we can maintain the level of quality.
Wired: And other large software companies don't?
Levie: What happens to the Microsofts, Oracles and IBMs of the world is that when they get big enough, they don't think they need to bring that same level of focus and energy to the end-user experience.
It's not accidental that products get worse over time; it's because companies stop paying attention to them. They stop caring as much about maintaining the same quality they did when they were just trying to fight for survival and no one would pay attention unless they had the best technology.
I think most companies, whether it's to get something to market quickly or some external pressure, end up compromising their product.
Wired: Which is where Box found its opening, right?
__Levie:__That's right. We're finding the gaps that other big software companies leave open, and slipping into them before they wake up to see how much the world has changed. In the meantime, we're running as fast we can, and the incumbents are trying to figure out their response to the threat that we pose.
Wired: Mobile seems to be the theme of 2012. Is it a theme that applies to storage too? Are you and your customers focused on it?
"We're finding the gaps that other big software companies leave open, and slipping into them before they wake up to see how much the world has changed."Levie: It couldn't be more crucial. On the priority ranking it's probably number one for technology companies simply because we have more mobile devices than PCs. It resets the playing field for basically every technology provider out there. It's the fastest technology transformation that's happened by far.
Consider this. We'll be at around 1.3 billion mobile workers by 2015. Twenty years ago the max amount of people you could reach was maybe 20 to 30 million, and today you can reach over a billion people with these mobile platforms. It completely changes and expands the market for every company out there.
Wired: What's a company's first step when moving into mobile?
Levie: The first wave of mobile tools is mobile manifestations of what we had already built on the desktop or browser. Most of the mobile applications we use today are things you probably could have done on your computer, but in a different form factor. That's usually the first wave of technology.
The really cool and transformative changes are the ones that actually leverage the location element, the on-site element, and the form factor of a phone. A good example is Square, which wasn't possible before you had the iPad. For them it wasn't about taking technology you use and porting it to the iPad, it's about taking something that was never used as digital technology, often replacing analog technology or a physical process, and making it a digital process.
Wired: What's been the most dramatic change in the enterprise over the last several years?
Levie: The business models in enterprise have changed pretty dramatically. A huge problem with enterprise software traditionally has been usually you sell to the customer and then they adopt the technology. The great thing about freemium and the new way enterprise software is being sold is you get to try it first and then buy it.
Previously you could win in the enterprise software world by being better at sales than the next guy. Today, your product has to be better because no customer is going to buy something that's already been adopted but isn't working to solve their problem.
Wired: How have the relationships between employees using a product and the company that builds the product changed?
Levie: Previously, the vendor didn't have much of a relationship with the end-user. That relationship was many degrees away. In between the vendor and the end-user was everything from the CIO and the IT buyer, to some third-party system integrator.
Today, you finally have this alignment where when we build technology, we're thinking about that end-user first. Because of that, we're moving much faster and deploying technology at a greater speed than any enterprise company could be.
Wired: How will the cloud change enterprise software going forward?
Levie: For most organizations we speak with, cloud is still a minority of the technology they're implementing. But what happens when cloud becomes the majority and becomes the core IT infrastructure that most businesses are using? I think there will be changes in the IT world, because IT buyers won't have to manage all this infrastructure anymore and all the problems that come with it.
Five to 10 years ago, most of IT's time was spent rebooting servers, backing up servers, and working on the network. It was incredibly expensive and time consuming and you never got to implement new technologies for your business because your time was spent on these core IT problems. Finally, we're at time where IT workers are free to work on competitive technology for their companies.
