How They Hire: Aaron Levie, Co-founder & CEO of Box
Every week, we highlight a top founder's hiring playbook.
In 2015, Aaron Levie was asked about Box's journey to $250m in ARR at the SaaStr Annual Conference held at the Regency Center in San Francisco. This success wouldn’t have been possible without the right people:
We look for people who have a healthy disregard for the impossible. You want people who are builders, people who are creators, people who are going to run through walls to make something happen. The most important trait is speed. Are you able to learn, iterate, and move faster than anyone else? In our industry, that's the only sustainable competitive advantage.
Aaron Levie, Co-founder & CEO of Box
Levie is known for his high-energy leadership and relentless focus on speed and disruption.
Thus, his hiring philosophy is centred on finding people who share this sense of urgency and possess an almost obsessive drive to solve customer problems.
He looks for individuals with a "founder's mentality", people who aren’t content with the status quo and are wired to challenge legacy systems. Levie believes that in a fast-moving market, the key to success is having a team that can operate at an incredibly high tempo, learn quickly, and adapt to constant change.
