When Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith were still in college, they had a million dollar idea. When Levie was just 19, he had the grand idea to provide online file storage to different businesses. Levie thought outside the box like all entrepreneurs do, and took a thoughtful approach to something that had existed for a while- files. Levie saw the computer industry expanding and thought creatively how he could take advantage of this.

Now Levie is the co-owner to a company worth billions of dollars by net worth. Levie met Dylan Smith in middle school and then they ended up going to the high school together as well. Smith recalled that even back in high school Levie was very interested in entrepreneurship, even more than himself. Another friend of theirs, Jeff Quiesse,  who is now Vice President of Box’s technical operations, met the two of them before middle school as neighbors. Queisser recalled that the two of them in high school were starting “kinda crazy businesses.” They also formed a friendship with a guy named Sam Ghods.

Where did Levie’s idea come from? Levie was working on a lot of projects that involved a lot of files and his work seemed unnecessarily difficult. When Levie had a project where he was asked to evaluate an industry. Levie decided to evaluate the nascent online storage industry and there was massive potential for success here. Levie capitalized on the opportunity with his million dollar idea. Levie was going to the University of Southern California but was still able to keep in touch with Smith, mostly just for their idea for their new company in the works. Smith was going to Duke in North Carolina, so this company formed on shaky ground, but with the two friends’ perseverance the first file storage company was birthed in 2005. Shortly after this, Dropbox was created in 2007, Microsoft One Drive in 2007, iCloud in 2011, and Google Drive in 2012.