Aaron Levie was only 20 years old when he took a shot in the dark by emailing billionaire investor Mark Cuban. What came after was a $350,000 investment that played a huge role in launching cloud storage startup Box, which is now valued at $4.6 billion.
What Happened: In 2005, as a student at the University of Southern California, Levie started developing an online storage platform.
His co-founder, Dylan Smith, invested $20,000 from online poker winnings, and they soon managed to raise $80,000 in seed funding to officially incorporate Box. But Levie did not stop there. He sent cold emails to several potential backers, one of them being Mark Cuban.
"If you were [even] remotely an investor in 2005, you got an email from me," Levie told CNBC Make It. His pitch focused on the rising demand for faster, cheaper online data storage as users shifted between multiple devices. Cuban responded within hours and committed $350,000, without even meeting the team.
"That was wild, because it happened so fast," Levie said, labelling it their "breakthrough investment."
Why It Matters: While Cuban's support boosted the team's confidence to drop out of school and put in all their time into the company, their relationship ruptured when Box adopted a freemium model, which Cuban disagreed with. In 2006, after obtaining $1.5 million in new funding, Levie bought out Cuban's stake.
Box went public in 2014 with a valuation of $1.7 billion, but Cuban stood by his exit, expressing concerns about the company's financial difficulties. The company has since weathered the storm, raking in $129 million in profit for 2024.
Levie says Cuban's early reply was a defining moment. "It's very surreal when you see the name of somebody that you hold in high esteem in your inbox," he said.
To young founders, he says: "Email everybody." "Most of the time they're not gonna respond. But… you'll catch the one that does."
His advice mirrors what Apple co-founder Steve Jobs said in a 1994 interview, where he recommended reaching out to people and asking for help in order to fulfill one's goals.
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