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Aaron Levie's Secret: Spend Time With Your Most Futuristic Customers

By Aaron Levie · Investing · 1 min read

Levie says your most innovative customers will see things before you will. But don't just build what they ask for.

Key Points

The top 5-10% of your customers are at the bleeding edge — they see trends before you do
Listen to their problems but don't build exactly what they ask for
When you just build what customers ask for, you lose your north star

Spend a lot of time with your most futuristic customers. They're going to see things even before you will about how your technology could be used.

The Bleeding Edge Customers

Levie: You always have a bell curve of customers — how innovative they are versus how conservative. The customers at the first 5 to 10% of that bell curve are at the bleeding edge of everything.

These are the people who wait in line for AirPods and have an Amazon Alexa at their desk in their office. You want to spend a lot of time with them because they're going to see things even before you will about how your technology could be used in their environment.

The amount of innovation we've been able to drive because of what we've heard from those customers is probably a significant percentage of what we've ended up building.

They're going to see things even before you will about how your technology could be used.

Listen but Don't Just Build What They Ask For

Levie: The difference from legacy enterprise software to today — back in the day, you would just ask customers what they want and then go build those things because it would lead to a sale or an upsell.

What you need to do is listen to what the issues are, what they wish your product could do, and then come back with solutions that maybe aren't exactly what they asked for. Maybe aren't the specific features they asked for. But are going to get them down the path they're really trying to push your product in.

Listen to what the issues are, then come back with solutions that maybe aren't exactly what they asked for.

The Feature Request Trap

Levie: We spend a lot of time listening to customers but not building exactly what they ask for. Because when you just build what a customer asks for, you become the amalgamation of feature requests from every single one of your customers. There's no way you're going to keep a consistent north star with your product.

The software vendors that do it really wrong is by not listening at all to those early adopters. They start focusing on the most conservative companies, the people that will only adopt if they build all the features they ask for. That's really how you go wrong in enterprise software — you lose sight of your vision and ultimately what you're trying to build.

When you just build what a customer asks for, you become the amalgamation of feature requests from every single one of your customers.