I dropped out of college and built a $3.6B company from scratch

Get Sam and Shaan's hard-won CEO lessons in one guide: https://clickhubspot.com/ktng

Episode 838: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk to Aaron Levie ( https://x.com/levie ) talk about building Box, getting rich slowly, why AI might make us work harder.

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Show Notes:

(0:00) Story of Box

(06:30) Enterprise Over Consumer

(10:00) Turning Down Huge Acquisition Offers

(17:05) Angel Investing, Missed Bets, and Investing in Your P&L

(23:00) Aaron’s Contrarian AI Takes: More Jobs, More Work

(30:00) Founder Anxiety, Therapy, and Surviving the CEO Grind

(38:45) The Business Strategy Books Aaron Swears By

(48:00) AI Tools, Software Stocks, and Why SaaS Isn’t Dead

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Links:

• Box - https://www.box.com/ 

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Check Out Sam's Stuff:

• Hampton (joinhampton.com): My community for founders. Average member does $25m/year. Many of the guests are members. Get after it...apply: http://joinhampton.com/mfm

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Check Out Shaan's Stuff:

• Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com 

• Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents.

• Mercury - Shaan uses Mercury for banking across all of his companies. you can too: http://mercury.com/ 

Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC

• I run all my newsletters on Beehiiv and you should too + we're giving away $10k to our favorite newsletter, check it out:

beehiiv.com/mfm-challenge

My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano /