Aaron Levie

AARON LEVIE

Part of being a savvy entrepreneur is being able to ride the wave of change or simply solve a deep seated societal problem.

Box.net is a prime example of the type of service/technology that gives value and makes sense of all the virtual information we have floating around. In other words, it allows us (the users) to share, access and store all types of digital files from anywhere in the world. With this kind of service, whether you are an individual or a corporation, it doesn’t really matter – you need it.

Aaron Levie, 23 is the co-founder and CEO of Box.net and VP of Marketing Jen Grant. It’s provides a cloud content management solution for more than 3.5 million users and businesses, and has served over a billion files to date. Box’s web-based platform offers a range of features to enhance collaboration and enable businesses to share content within and beyond their organizations.

In 2009, the Company was awarded the Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal’s Emerging Tech award in the Cloud Computing category, and has also been named a WebWare 100 Award winner in 2007 and 2008, and one of AlwaysOn’s “AO Top Private Companies” for 2007. Co-founders Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith were among the top five finalists in BusinessWeek’s “Best Entrepreneurs 25 and Under” rankings for 2009.

Box.net launched an all-new version in February 2009, featuring an all-new interface, robust user profiles, discussions and bookmarking features, all aimed at more business-focused collaboration.

As a result of this acquisition, Box.net launched two new features in January 2010: an integrated content viewer that provides full-viewing capabilities for a broad range of file types inside the Box environment, and the ability to embed these files anywhere on the web.

Did Aaron think his idea was worth a fortune at the time? Maybe, maybe not. Aaron stresses the importance of being able to believe in the service or product you have to offer. This kind of conviction will go along way in attracting the right kind of people.

Aaron recounts that in the beginning of their adventure they didn’t quite realize what they had, but they continued to believe. It was only when Billionare Mark Cuban called them that they realized that they were unto something pretty big!

Today, digital data (media, files, photos etc) is growing by leaps and bounds, and online storate is no longer a comfortable alternative, but an absolute necessity! As a matter of fact, many sources say that revenue for this market could reach USD 821 million dollars by 2011 and triple by 2013.

So why is Mark Cuban interested in net entrepreneurs anyway? Well, it could be for many reasons, but you will notice that Internet entrepreneurs are a breed of their own…

Get into the minds of these gals and lads and see what many are not seeing:

Net Entrepreneurs Only: 10 Entrepreneurs Tell the Stories of Their Success