TEN THINGS ABOUT ME
15 Things About Aaron Levie
He founded his wildly successful start-up in his dorm room before dropping out and moving to the Bay Area to work on it full-time, he’s regularly referred to as one of the top entrepreneurs under 30, and he looks enough like Jesse Eisenberg to satisfy a movie audience. But unlike Mark Zuckerberg, Box CEO Aaron Levie’s favorite guilty pleasure is Twitter.
Below, Levie answers 15 of our questions — hopefully enough to satisfy an online audience.
Name one thing you will regret never having done (if you never do it).
Inventing the mainframe.
What’s the single most important issue in the world today?
The three Ps: Poverty, Politics, Phablets.
Do you still buy CDs or rent DVDs?
If by “buy CDs” you mean listen to Spotify and Pandora, and by “rent DVDs” you mean stream from Netflix, then yes.
What would you be doing if you were not in your current job?
Hopefully something else having to do with cloud computing. Nearly every market that exists today is a fraction of its potential size, creating new opportunities in every direction. So I’d want to still be doing that, or grinding it out as an astronaut.
What is your greatest achievement to date?
Building — and working with — the team at Box.
iPhone, Android or BlackBerry?
My trusty iPhone 4. I know, I’m an embarrassment to the technology community.
If you could meet any historical or fictional person, who would it be?
Thomas Watson Sr., Harry Houdini, or Groucho Marx.
What site/app do you check first when you wake up?
https://twitter.com/larryellison. Followed by Box.com right after that.
What was your first computer?
Not a Mac, and I blame my Dad for that to this day.
What’s your favorite mode of transportation?
Whatever gets you there fastest.
What was the last book you read?
“The HP Way,” a marginally ironic read given the past couple of years, but I’m pretty bullish on Meg. I’m now reading “The Ultimate Entrepreneur” about Ken Olsen and DEC.
Name your favorite guilty pleasure.
Twitter.
What was your biggest most recent purchase?
A bookshelf-like structure from IKEA.
Whom do you idolize?
Too many people to count. I tend to not discriminate when it comes to people I can learn from. Basically, if someone has built a meaningful business in software, technology or media, faced disruption and adversity, and overcame underdog status, I want to know how they did it.
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
My height. And my ability to stay organized.