by Peter High, published on Forbes.com 09-09-2013
I recently caught up with Aaron Levie, the Box CEO, as he and his team prepared for BoxWorks, the company’s user conference, which will kick off this Sunday in San Francisco. (To listen to an extended podcast interview that I conducted with Levie, please use this link.) I asked him for a preview of what he plans on sharing with the thousands of gathered technology executives and enthusiasts. He offered an overview of Box’s strategy going forward, advice he would offer technology executives who are still in the early stages of adopting the cloud, and he could not help but mention how delighted that he was to have his favorite band, Blink 182, playing the after party on September 17. In many ways, Box has been the very epitome of consumerization of technology. Box began as a consumer service, helping individuals share data securely across many devices. Consumers liked the service so much that it quickly penetrated the commercial space as these individuals began to use it at work just as they did at home. In Box’s continued evolution from consumer to commercial player, now that it has penetrated the overwhelming majority of multi-billion dollar companies in the U.S., Levie has been focused on developing industry verticals to focus its services on. When I asked him how he has chosen the verticals that Box has focused on to date, he indicated that he looks for “the best mix of a complex, highly regulated industry that is benefiting from much cheaper, much simpler technology like Box.” Levie’s recipe for success has been a combination of luring leading technology talent with depth of experience in the relevant industry verticals to join Box for this journey, partnering with leading technology companies whose focus is squarely on each of these verticals, and he the company has made a number of key investments to broaden Box’s offering in each of these spaces….
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