Box CEO Aaron Levie weighs in on markets, privacy

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Box has come a long way since Aaron Levie founded it as a student at USC in 2005.

The cloud storage company ultimately went public last year, in what turned out to be a difficult period for tech stocks.  Recent IPOs like Box have been facing added scrutiny, and its shares are currently trading below the IPO price.  

TechCrunch sat down with Box CEO Aaron Levie to get his take on the obstacles in running a newly public company. We also asked him why he’s been a strong backer of Apple in the government privacy debate.

Despite its difficulties, Levie said that going public has ultimately been a good thing for Box. “It creates new challenges,” but “it’s also come with a lot of benefits.”

“We are able to drive a lot of more transparency in our business that creates better recognition, better understanding in the customer base,” he added.

Levie also spoke about why he firmly supports Apple in the FBI controversy and why he’s passionate about customer privacy.

“We were very much in favor of Apple,” said Levie. He explained that the perception that the U.S. government could access documents “created more friction internationally, certainly doesn’t accelerate business and the ability to work globally,” but Box has created security solutions to combat these concerns.

Nearly eleven years later, Levie says the company is still focused on their original mission. “We wanted to make it easy to share and access information from anywhere.”

Check out the above video for more from Levie.