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Idea Grew By Combining Boldness With Strategy: Cold Emails to Investors Opened Doors and Transformed the Startup Into a Billion-Dollar Powerhouse
In 2005, a 20-year-old college student decided to bet everything on a simple, yet powerful idea: to create a company that allowed people to work from anywhere with access to their files. Aaron Levie, a student at the University of Southern California, began developing this idea alongside Dylan Smith, Sam Ghods, and Jeff Queisser.
Thus, Box was born, a cloud storage company that, years later, would be valued at $4.6 billion.
First Investment Came From Poker
To get the project off the ground, the partners needed capital. Dylan Smith took the first step and invested $20,000 he had won playing poker online.
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Then, they raised another $80,000 in seed capital. But this amount was still insufficient compared to what would be needed to scale the business.
It was at that moment that the strategy of sending cold emails to investors began. Aaron Levie decided to send messages to anyone he thought could be a potential investor.
Mark Cuban Responds and Bets Big
One of those emails reached Mark Cuban, billionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team. To Levie’s surprise, Cuban replied just a few hours later. Initially, he suggested a partnership to develop a storage solution for one of his companies.
But the conversation evolved. Without ever having met the founders of Box in person, Mark Cuban decided to invest $350,000 in the startup. The influx of this capital was a turning point.
With the Money, Came the Turnaround
With Cuban’s investment, the partners were able to hire engineers, pay for servers, and even invest in digital marketing. They also opened a toll-free line for customer support.
In the beginning, everything operated from Smith’s parents’ attic in Mercer Island, Washington. Later, the operation was moved to Levie’s uncle’s garage in Berkeley, California.
The confidence generated by this support was so great that Aaron Levie and his partners dropped out of college to dedicate themselves fully to the company.
Levie’s First Professional Emotion
Seeing Mark Cuban’s name in the inbox was significant. “It’s surreal to see the name of someone you really admire in your inbox,” Levie told CNBC.
It was there that he felt for the first time a genuinely professional emotion. A feeling that he was doing something great, even though he was still far from achieving the success that would come years later.
Cuban’s Short But Decisive Partnership
Despite the initial boost, the relationship with Cuban did not last long. In 2006, Box adopted a freemium model and began offering 1 gigabyte of free storage to attract users. Mark Cuban disagreed with this strategy.
He was also against the idea of seeking more investments to sustain the company’s growth. Because of this, when Box secured a new round of investment worth $1.5 million, the founders bought out Cuban’s stake.
Box Goes Public, and Cuban Criticizes
In 2014, Box went public with a valuation of $1.7 billion. At the time, Cuban commented on Twitter that he would “explode” if he had to run a company that lost more than it made.
Even so, time showed a different result. Since 2023, Box has started to report annual profits. In 2024, the net profit was $129 million, according to CNBC.
Cuban Reads and Responds to Emails to This Day
Mark Cuban has a public email. In 2020, CNBC revealed that he receives up to a thousand messages a day. He deletes most without even opening them, but some catch his attention. When that happens, he starts asking questions.
If the entrepreneur teaches something new, the project goes to his analysis team. But if the email is too long, uses empty promises, or insists with multiple messages, he ignores it.
The Advice From Someone Who Has Been Through This
Today, Aaron Levie still believes in the power of email. For him, the secret is to send messages to everyone. Most will not respond, but there’s always someone who can change the game.
According to him, the most important thing is to have the courage to ask for help. A simple gesture that, in the case of Box, turned a college dorm idea into a billion-dollar company.
With information from Xataka.
“Não tenha medo de ajudar quem precisa e nem vergonha de pedir ajuda quando precisar!”
QUANDO A PESSOA NASCE COM UMA ESTRELA, É DIFÍCIL APAGÁ-LA