In a surprising twist, Aaron Levie, Box co-founder, was able to close this innovative $350,000 investment. He did all this at 20 years old with the support of billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban. That formative moment came at a time when Levie was still just an undergrad at the University of Southern California. That day signified the incredible journey of Box and its explosive rise to become a cloud storage and file-sharing powerhouse currently valued at $4.6 billion.
Levie cold emailed Cuban to get his attention, pitching his startup idea. To our surprise, within hours, Cuban personally responded, and with that we had launched a very productive partnership. Levie recalls the excitement of seeing Cuban’s name in his inbox: “It’s very surreal when you see the name of somebody that you hold in high esteem in your inbox,” he said.
Cuban’s willingness to invest without having first met Levie and his future co-founders face-to-face signaled a sea change for the young company. With funding locked in, Levie developed swagger. That led him to drop out of college and go all in on building Box. “We were just really, really excited that it went through,” he remembered.
Looking back on his original investment in Box, Cuban would later admit he was torn on the company’s focus. A year after making his investment he went on Twitter and announced that he would “combust” if forced to run a company where expenses were greater than income. At the time, Box was experiencing just that challenge. Cuban’s initial backing helped them set the stage for subsequent funding rounds that would provide the fuel needed for Box to hit its hypergrowth trajectory.
With these changes, in April of 2006, Box was able to successfully raise another $1.5 million funding round, this one led by venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. This sudden influx of capital pushed the company to startup in a highly competitive market. It allowed the business to improve its product and grow its user base. Due in no small part to these shrewd moves, Box has posted annual profits every year since 2023. In 2024, they appropriately earned a stunning $129 million in net income.
Even though Cuban was right to be concerned about Box’s early posture on financial health, it didn’t matter. Box had a valuation of about $1.7 billion when it went public in 2014. That was an impressive jump from the company’s founding days. In that moment, Levie knew their pitch had landed, and with Cuban, at a vital moment. As Patrick put it, “I think our pitch just landed at the right time with him.”
Cuban’s investment story serves as a reminder of how pivotal moments can reshape the trajectory of young entrepreneurs and innovative startups. Levie and his co-founders burned the midnight oil during those early years, refusing paychecks to reinvest in growth. “We didn’t pay ourselves anything. This was just purely, like, ‘Let’s grow the business as much as possible,’” Levie explained.
Box originally launched as an email pitch. Today, it’s a multibillion-dollar powerhouse, evidence of what tenacity, smart investment, and a little luck can do in the volatile tech startup world. Fast forward to present day, where the company is now the cloud storage and secure file sharing leader. It illustrates the amazing things that can happen when ambition meets opportunity.