Aaron Levie Quotes

Iteration, not ideation, is the most important part of early stage entrepreneurship. You have to have a lot of ideas - a lot of bad ideas - if you want to end up with a good one.

Entrepreneurs need to start building today. The barrier to entry in tech is low, so start designing, start coding it, launch it, build prototypes, build a working version of it. The Internet has amazing powers of distribution. You can test your ideas. You can see if it works, if it doesn't work, whether it's fun, and whether you're sufficiently motivated. People who go into entrepreneurship to get rich aren't going to be happy. It’s the building of things that makes you happy. You have to enjoy the process whether you succeed or fail.

The reason why the Wright brothers were successful wasn't because they had the most resources, but because they understood how invention works. You have to iterate quickly, and you should be prepared to fail. Because things often don't go as planned.

At MakerBot, we joke that if we were engineers we would still be on our first prototype. There's something about just 'Doing it”iteration is a way of engineering.

He who makes the quickest, coolest prototypes reigns!

Few ideas work on the first try. Iteration is key to innovation.

If you are truly innovating, you don't have a prototype you can refer to.

For me, I'd rather be the inventive one, and if something doesn't work, I'll go back to the workshop, put it on the bench, and pound on it for awhile.

The beauty of the innovation that flows from the open web is that no one has to ask for permission, get a credential, or win a Disrupt or Launch award to go prove their idea is worthy. They just... put up a page on the web, iterate, iterate, iterate... and eventually, a Facebook emerges.

Within HTC, hundreds of ideas are tested and discarded to find those rare ideas that define the HTC user experience.

Ideas do not always come in a flash but by diligent trial-and-error experiments that take time and thought.

Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.

We struggle with the right words to describe the design process at Apple. But it is very much about designing and prototyping and making.

I like new products, I like when YouTube changes, I like when people have big ideas and try things out.

Build something, make something, test something, sell something. Learn for yourself if your idea is a good one.

Anyone who's really utilized collaboration has a philosophy like, 'Let's throw it all against the wall and see what sticks.' That's how we do it. At a certain point, we're cutting scripts that we love.

In a startup, both the problem and solution are unknown.

A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.

Making mistakes, getting it almost right, and experimenting to see what happens are all part of the process of eventually getting it right.

I made 5,127 prototypes of my vaccum before I got it right. There were 5,126 failures. But I learned from each one. That’s how I came up with a solution. So I don’t mind failure.

Don't let people tell you your ideas won't work. If you're passionate about an idea that's stuck in your head, find a way to build it so you can prove to yourself that it doesn't work.

When it comes to innovation, business has much to learn from design. The philosophy in design shops is, 'try it, prototype it, and improve it'.

I'm very musically curious and I love new experience. I'm an adventurer. Some people want to sort of stay in a safe zone and repeat the same things and give them more depth, and I want to do new things all the time

I want to do something different, really different, and if it alienates people that's too bad.

A lot of people believe that you don't need to know the history and that creates newness. I disagree: we should always be informed and then destroy it.