>> an uncommon greed in the world of enterprise technology. aaron levie he is known for his colorful sneakers and iran tweets. there is no underestimating his ambition to dominate business in the cloud. he started when he was 13 and that the kids who would become his cofounders as far back as middle school. unlike facebook and twitter, where tales of early inciting or legend, all four founders of

bucks still work there a decadent -- decade later. joining me now is aaron levie. >> what are the socks? >> clout socks. -- cloud socks. >> you grew up in seattle. what kind of kid were you? long, for too too much time on the internet. sort of large volume of friends. most of those that were my friends founded the company with me. we grew up in the shadow of microsoft >> you idolize jeff bezos and bill gates. >> everybody knew the bill gates story by heart. what's cool about microsoft is that you can actually go and be a product tester. a lot of people from high school would go to microsoft and test new products and they would give you a free mouse.

>> tell me about that. the first cofounder of bucks. our chief financial officer. we actually played trumpet together in middle school. neither of us were good at that. i did a lot of stuff on the internet with justin and later in high school. >> tell me how box began. >> not a lot of innovation happening. it was really hard to do basic things like sharing files and accessing data from anywhere and have you collaborated work with other people. i was in college at the time. what if you could have these sort of hard drives in the cloud that would let you put all your files in these hard drives and access it from the internet and a vice you wanted to work from. >> tell me about those early days. >> one was mark cuban was an angel investor in box. that was done by a cold e-mail we sent to mark back in 2005.

they sent us a $350,000 check. that gave dylan and myself the idea that maybe we should pursue this full-time. idea too us putting the our parents that we're going to drop out of college. they started to freak out. we had to do it and pursue this mission. we dropped out. we convinced our other two friends to also drop out of college. we all huddled together at berkeley. this is when you move to the garage? >> we moved to this renovated roger and berkeley that my uncle had built up. i'm not sure it was legal at all. we would spend 16 hours a day just working on the software, this is model, marketing. we were just eating, sleeping in the same place. pretty disgusting, actually. know, itally want to is more akin to a sweatshop. this is how you build companies pay >> you tweeted a picture of that garage.

worked, andpt, built. when it came to each of your cofounders, what were your roles? >> we got lucky. we each bring a different kind of skill to the table. we had the software skills, the hardware, networking skills. finance,e administration, legal, business operations skills. we focused on the product side. >> in those earliest days, what did you fight about? >> the sort of fighting and all of the bickering as founders. the nice thing is that it fall fell back on that trusted relationship that let us work through that. we did not have early founding battles that other companies have run into. that was because we had been friends for some cases a decade. twitter, tales of infighting and backstabbing.

what makes box unique? >> when you play trump it with your cofounder at 11 years old, that biga friendship ring and frustration from building a company cannot break. >> has keeping the team together been a priority? >> yes. we spend a lot of time together. we do our own -- you had a moment where you thought you did not want to keep doing this. it has been 10 years. >> it has been 10 years. i have no idea if my cofounders have had those moments, but none that i have been told about. >> what is it like becoming a ceo at 19 years old, when your piers are in college, studying, partying. >> it is worse than what your piers are going through. to beot very illustrious a ceo of a two-person company.

it got me excluded from parties. it looked like they were having a lot more fun from a distance. it is generally more fun to go a computer 14 hours a day during college. >> what is the myth of aaron levie and what is the reality? >> it's still early for myths. that it is as simple idea. our job is to build software enterprises did not think was possible to create. >> how is aaron levie sitting in front of me today different from the 19-year-old? >> i would be grabbing my hair more. i had more issues with add. >> i know you are on the road a lot. have you structure your time? >> it turns out that enterprises are everywhere. you go out to a farm who is going to used runs to manage their agricultural business, you don't know how these

technologies are going to intersect with the real world. you have to go out on the road and not the understand that. >> the view is that it is silica and the only -- silicon valley versus the rest of the world. when actually silicon valley is being integrated into the rest of the world. ♪

>> you drink a lot of coffee. >> i do. chris you take a nap. every day. >> i do. the three medications i take every year. -- three vacations i tech every year. practice -- best right around 7 p.m. or so -- you take a 25 minute power nap and you wake up fully recharged and that last for about another five hours. that is me time. that is when i design what we are going to do next. what are we behind on. what i need to start thinking

about. that is when everybody gets inundated by details -- e-mails from me. diary? >> the range of different industries in what you have to learn about is very fast. you have to keep track of that somewhere. >> this is something only you see? >> yes there it i would not want you to see it. these are my personal thanks. >> how big is box? >> we have 1100 employees. we have 240,000 businesses actively using the product. are paying fors our enterprise edition of the service. 27 million users. >> you recently rolled out box for industry? that inarted to see every industry we were serving there was some edge of our product or as you their use that was far more advanced and innovative than we had ever

imagined that could be run with our platform technology. today, we cover health care, media, retail, but we will be announcing another couple of industries that will take box into regulated industries that we think are right for change. it will serve every major industry. what you are seeing so much change in the world of enterprise technology. larry ellison stepping down. hp's living out. ibm struggling good when it comes to incumbents versus startups, how does it play out? >> every couple of decades, you have this sort of changing of the guard as it were. startups that are optimized for that disruption have an opportunity to take advantage of that and potentially build the next era of ibm and hp and microsoft. at the same time, you do have incumbents that have a lot of cash.

they are led by an incredibly smart and astute leaders that understand the change. the changes you are seeing are driven specifically because they are being disrupted. not a technology company anymore. it is a bet against innovation. >> that is a provocative statement. , you havef relevance leaders of these companies that are recognizing that their previous strategy would have lead to irrelevance and have to change that. we have a view that everything is you are some. ibm does not have to lose for apple to win. >> what about microsoft? a company you work with. >> there are specific product areas where we could potentially lose or be harmed by some of this transition, but there is an entire company at the macro level that does not necessarily have to lose. >> companies like microsoft, google, amazon or dropping the price of cloud storage.

how much of a threat is that? >> we love that. the same unit us the rich is now a 40th of a price and it was 10 years ago. the cheaper storage gets, the more data we can store for a customer and the more we can deliver unique experiences around the content. >> you took on $150 million in funding. the company is now valued at $2.4 billion white you need that money? -- why do you need that money? >> a week after we filed, there was a bit of a market correction in the tech space. you saw a bit of volatility and a lot of high-growth technology companies. we decided it was not the best time to bring a new company to market. lated amazing support from stage investors.

they were willing and interested in supporting the company is a private company. we took that money on to allow us to continue investing growth, invest in the business model and build out box without going public. >> what is the status of the ipo? >> we are still on file. we are still technically not able to talk too much about that. definitely be one of the first people to hear about it once we share any updated information. >> how much have you wonder did we make a mistake? did we file too soon? >> what is obvious is that we should not have filed when we did. we certainly dealt with a lot of distraction because of that filing. was -- that whether that a lot of the unfortunate news reports in the cycle that had to happen around the business -- obviously we brought that on because of the filing. that was a distraction to what are core focus is, execution,

and building the business. life is too short to have any specific regrets. we have learned. we remain in full execution mode. >> i'm curious about what that moment was like for you. everybody can see your finances. >> that is next ring phrase. we are competing against the biggest companies on the planet. industry.hnology to do that, you have to make a significant investment. int is an investment research and development, infrastructure, sales team, and our ability to go to market. >> the criticism was that you are spending more on sales and marketing to acquire customers than you are making. how has that changed? >> every dollar of revenue is a dollar that is recurring annually. our job is to keep our customers happy and successful.

we happen to reveal our s-1 at a point when new investments had outpaced the revenue scale. now we are more in the stage onre the revenue is focused growing. that is compounding. we don't have many of the new significant investments because we have done a lot of the international expansion. we built out a lot of the enterprise sales force. you're starting to see that efficiency play out over time. >> how much of you thought about selling box? software to a lot of companies. us for the company itself, we spend about 0% of the time thinking about it. >> this is a critical market that a lot of technology businesses have trouble getting into. what is your strategy? my challenge has been how to we grow and explore working in the market. what you will see is a partner overtime with key players in the

space. i would not expect us doing anything real big in china in the near future. >> there is a company called dropbox. you overlap to a certain extent in terms of business. much of an inconvenience as dropbox been for you? inconveniences a unique word. i think they are an innovative company. leader.e an incredible we are a fierce competitor from the business standpoint. i think that the world is better with them. >> why do you think you can offer business companies -- customer something better than they can? >> it is really hard to balance a strategy where you are world-class and the consumer side and also be world-class for hospital or a life sciences company or a financial services

institution. those are difference types of problems. at box, we don't have any distractions. we are 100% focused on enterprise. between peter thiel and mark andreessen, my tweet volume. ♪

>> silicon valley is sometimes criticized for being too audacious, too arrogant, and thinking we can change the world . is that fair? that there wase a cycle of disruption in silicon where software companies disrupted themselves but we are going through an evolution where we are having to interact with so many new markets in so many different ways. , weirst that starts out as can solve those problems better than anybody else. sometimes that is right, and sometimes that is not. sometimes we look obnoxious for it. the outside world is on some believe -- unbelievably

fascinated and -- with and excited about working with silicon value during this way of disruption. >> because we are living in our own bubble? >> we live in our own bubble. the view is silicon valley versus the rest of the world. it is actually silicon valley inc. integrated into the rest of the world. for the first time, we are not in this isolated universe. it is it -- it is its own industry. retailer same kind of that five years ago you would have thought was going away because of the internet. there are a tremendous number of companies that are trying to help you develop new experiences for your customers. 10 years ago you thought amazon was just going to destroy your entire industry, and now you are on the upswing because we want all new experiences of how we shop. >> you think there is no such

thing as the tech industry or in the future the tech industry won't be so? >> i think it will be less defined. you will have silicon valley. starthould be seen as the -- sort of software layer of every other industry. >> your tweets are widely followed. >> thank you. >> thank you for the good material. in response that you reign in your tweets after deciding to go public, you tweeted a photo of a missouri law form -- firm. >> i'm not sure how that happened. let's hope you will get sued over it. >> i'm sure we sent them some traffic. >> tweeting as much as you do, why? fact -- that it can dispel is that i tweet only once or twice a day. >> your way behind mark

andreessen. thiel andtween peter mark andreessen regarding my tweet volume. it is one outlet that my pr team does not control for me to be able to share my thoughts on the technology industry. >> why aren't you more scared? is that might be generational. i grew up in chat rooms. i'm sure i will say some things that i wake up to in the morning and pull a donald trump or something. regret treating for the rest of my life. >> how much of it is strategy? >> it is less strategic than you might think. my brain is all over the place. it is actually very representative of the random notions that i have. >> i've had the benefit of seeing you do magic. >> i am less active now is a magician. >> what have you learned from that? how is it affected your career? >> magic is weird. have you been to magic conference? >> no. that sounds like an interesting experience.

industrych entergy -- as up diversions the problem. as it wast may not do a fun experience in my teenage years. become a public company? that is the path we are on. -- >> that is the path we are on. let's would you ever start anything new? or is this it? >> if this continues to grow, i will be doing this for christ sometime. >> you want to be larry ellison? ,> because of what we do transcend different platforms and devices, ways you will work with information, there is no limit to what can be possible and are market. we have a very wide palette to work with. .> aaron levie, ceo of box

thank you very much. great to have you. >> thank you. ♪

>> welcome to "money clip," where we tie together the best stories, interviews, and video in business news. here is your rundown. in company, green mountain or mr. coffee? uber's bumpy ride. we speak to the journalist that says the company is using scare tactics against her. then we had to the car