My biggest gripe with this is the reasoning for “no, AI is not going to take everyone’s jobs.”
Obviously the state of “workers and AI together” comes first. So there’s not going to be some strawman cliff where suddenly all jobs are replaced in a month.
But people like him lay out this future and then act like AI just stops there. Of course there will be an intermediate state. And then that state will be passed over as AI move further up the chain and humans are eliminated from office labor entirely.
Man you guys are pessimistic and stuck in your bubbles. Asking if box is relevant when they’ve had growth the last two quarters while Dropbox is on the verge of seeing a drop in numbers. Yes ms and Google are seeing more but the product box is putting out is light years ahead of Dropbox, egnyte, and, honesty, most of FAANG, in terms of supporting the average office worker. They aren’t building sexy AI coders but they are making it so Sue Ellen, the EA to the VP of fuckall, can automate things and make life easier for everyone.
I worked at box, albeit for only a year, and saw Aaron’s passion up close. He could step into an executive briefing center meeting and pull out projects the customer was working on a year prior that didn’t directly involve box and ask honest, empathetic questions about it.
He’s a nerd and loves talking about this stuff. Those saying he’s trying to remain relevant or find a new hole for box miss the fact he’s on cnbc and other business channels a few times a year just talking tech. Unless Houston who only shows up when Dropbox has a sad launch to tout.
Aaron is passionate about Box and has been fighting an uphill battle since day one but I’ve held on to my thousands of shares since I left and the value has doubled. I fully expect AI to accelerate their future and lead to a bigger balance sheet.
I see some comments here that are critical of Aaron, but I enjoyed the talk. Pretty good insider info on trends in the "enterprise" vis-a-vis ai and saas in general.
Especially liked the framing of structured vs unstructured data, and the opportunity to make unstructured data more useful with llmns.
I do not have much criticize or add except to emphasize that ai as it is now is probabilistic, not deterministic -- ask the same question twice and you could get vastly different answers.
I remarked on this back in March, prompted by Théophile Cantelobre's visualization of the connections between people in the culinary world and the restaurants they've been involved in.
Honest question — why is the CEO of a Enterprise cloud storage company so out in the public touting the benefits of AI?
Conversely, why aren't the senior leaders of Google Drive, SharePoint, etc. so consistently speaking about the benefits of AI?
A couple top of mind thoughts on the range of outcomes:
-Perhaps it's more of a requisite function of a company that went through a long phase of mild-growth (even anemic relative to the Nasdaq composite) and is seeking to maintain relevance with PR/Marketing spend
-They are investing in a step function product roadmap that could accelerate revenue growth and are positioning the brand for a future product launch.
-A slightly more cynical view, the CEO is searching for a new home for the company? It's been over 20 years, which fees like long time for a public technology company to have a single CEO.
-The CEO is positioning himself personally for a new VC fund. He's had some success with previous investments and is looking to preemptively market his new fund.
-A slightly more realistic view, the CEO (who seems really enthusiastic) is honestly just like the rest of us and got nerd-swiped by this AI thing and feels genuinely excited about it :-)
Either way he seems very well networked and able to appear nearly everywhere and re-cap information and insights from other source material. I'm curious what the underlying incentives/outcomes are for this kind of PR blitz.
When was the last time Box was relevant? Dropbox is struggling, can only imagine what Box is going through. Their stock isn't great and the outlook is "limited growth".
> Conversely, why aren't the senior leaders of Google Drive
Google execs are constantly talking about the benefits of AI. People lower on the totem pole just don't have the same platform as the top execs at Google do.
My biggest gripe with this is the reasoning for “no, AI is not going to take everyone’s jobs.”
Obviously the state of “workers and AI together” comes first. So there’s not going to be some strawman cliff where suddenly all jobs are replaced in a month.
But people like him lay out this future and then act like AI just stops there. Of course there will be an intermediate state. And then that state will be passed over as AI move further up the chain and humans are eliminated from office labor entirely.
My biggest gripe with your reasoning is a hidden assumption that everything humans do is easily encodable in what we call AI today.
I don’t think this is the case.
It will be encodable in what we call AI tomorrow
Man you guys are pessimistic and stuck in your bubbles. Asking if box is relevant when they’ve had growth the last two quarters while Dropbox is on the verge of seeing a drop in numbers. Yes ms and Google are seeing more but the product box is putting out is light years ahead of Dropbox, egnyte, and, honesty, most of FAANG, in terms of supporting the average office worker. They aren’t building sexy AI coders but they are making it so Sue Ellen, the EA to the VP of fuckall, can automate things and make life easier for everyone.
I worked at box, albeit for only a year, and saw Aaron’s passion up close. He could step into an executive briefing center meeting and pull out projects the customer was working on a year prior that didn’t directly involve box and ask honest, empathetic questions about it.
He’s a nerd and loves talking about this stuff. Those saying he’s trying to remain relevant or find a new hole for box miss the fact he’s on cnbc and other business channels a few times a year just talking tech. Unless Houston who only shows up when Dropbox has a sad launch to tout.
Aaron is passionate about Box and has been fighting an uphill battle since day one but I’ve held on to my thousands of shares since I left and the value has doubled. I fully expect AI to accelerate their future and lead to a bigger balance sheet.
I see some comments here that are critical of Aaron, but I enjoyed the talk. Pretty good insider info on trends in the "enterprise" vis-a-vis ai and saas in general.
Especially liked the framing of structured vs unstructured data, and the opportunity to make unstructured data more useful with llmns.
I do not have much criticize or add except to emphasize that ai as it is now is probabilistic, not deterministic -- ask the same question twice and you could get vastly different answers.
I remarked on this back in March, prompted by Théophile Cantelobre's visualization of the connections between people in the culinary world and the restaurants they've been involved in.
https://bjornwestergard.com/llm-extractors/
From the video: a lot of new companies are going to start
Well, there is this as well - https://finance.yahoo.com/news/openai-board-chair-doubles-do...
Altman was touring globally to raise $7T (yes, trillion), just a few months ago. So, not sure if they are purposefully trying to scare off people.
Honest question — why is the CEO of a Enterprise cloud storage company so out in the public touting the benefits of AI?
Conversely, why aren't the senior leaders of Google Drive, SharePoint, etc. so consistently speaking about the benefits of AI?
A couple top of mind thoughts on the range of outcomes:
-Perhaps it's more of a requisite function of a company that went through a long phase of mild-growth (even anemic relative to the Nasdaq composite) and is seeking to maintain relevance with PR/Marketing spend
-They are investing in a step function product roadmap that could accelerate revenue growth and are positioning the brand for a future product launch.
-A slightly more cynical view, the CEO is searching for a new home for the company? It's been over 20 years, which fees like long time for a public technology company to have a single CEO.
-The CEO is positioning himself personally for a new VC fund. He's had some success with previous investments and is looking to preemptively market his new fund.
-A slightly more realistic view, the CEO (who seems really enthusiastic) is honestly just like the rest of us and got nerd-swiped by this AI thing and feels genuinely excited about it :-)
Either way he seems very well networked and able to appear nearly everywhere and re-cap information and insights from other source material. I'm curious what the underlying incentives/outcomes are for this kind of PR blitz.
When was the last time Box was relevant? Dropbox is struggling, can only imagine what Box is going through. Their stock isn't great and the outlook is "limited growth".
“Feature not a product” looks like it was right in the long run.
> Conversely, why aren't the senior leaders of Google Drive
Google execs are constantly talking about the benefits of AI. People lower on the totem pole just don't have the same platform as the top execs at Google do.
And by Google, I mean Alphabet, not just search.
He's being a salesman, he wants to convince enterprises they need Box AI
He’s trying to stay relevant