In 2005, Box was founded in the heart of Silicon Valley, where they continue to thrive today. Ten years later, they opened an office on the East Coast and have been quickly making up for lost time.
With over 130 people in their NYC office, the Box team is expanding rapidly, filling out their new offices in the Flatiron District. We caught up with some Boxers who were around before the East Coast office expansion to see what’s changed, what’s stayed the same and what the future has in store.
Photography by Hannah Cohen
EMPLOYEES: 2,000 globally, 130 in NYC
FOUNDED: 2005
WHAT THEY DO: Box is a cloud content management company that empowers enterprises to revolutionize how they work by securely connecting their people, information and applications.
WHERE THEY DO IT: Flatiron District
PERKS: Unlimited PTO, uncapped commissions and an employee stock purchase plan.
IMPRESSIVE ROLODEX: Box works with big clients like Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and General Electric.
MORE THAN A SALE: Selling at Box isn’t quite the same as working on a sales team at a lot of other companies.
Lauren Willis, Director Mid-Market Sales
Lauren leads Box’s mid-market East team, and she’s the person responsible for recruiting, hiring and the development of new reps on the team.
BEYOND WORK: When she’s not looking at a Box’s analytics dashboard, you’ll find Lauren on a bike (incidentally, looking at the analytics on her cycle’s computer).
As Box has grown, you’ve taken on some very large clients – how has that opened up new opportunities for folks at Box? Have needs for new specializations within the team appeared?
That’s a great question. I think the opportunities offered to people here have changed, but not necessarily because our clients have changed. I believe it’s more that the complexity of the solutions we are providing and how closely this ties to revenue generation for our clients is what has changed.
In order for my team to help clients understand how they can create a better client experience, we need to know everything about what their current client experience looks like. We need to know what their competitors are doing and what regulations look like in their space today, as well as in the future. If we want to make a recommendation on how to reduce cycle times and streamline a loan organization or employee onboarding workflow, we need to know every step of those workflows and every bottleneck. And all of this requires working more closely with lines of business than ever before. Today, we have a larger emphasis than ever on solutioning and leveraging our extended partner network to help build the solutions that meet each of our client’s needs.
At Box, you have a team of incredible leaders who are genuinely curious about your goals, your business and want to see you succeed.”
As new opportunities arise, how are potential candidates for leadership positions identified?
I am always looking for opportunities to uplevel my team. I think that the team is strongest when everyone is learning from each other — myself included. I try to be deliberate about highlighting best practices and giving the reps the room to lead. If a rep has an idea for a project that they think could have an impact, I want them to have the autonomy to run with it, and I’ll be there along the way to support and help ideate. The leaders tend to be the ones who are naturally looking to solve problems that are bigger than themselves. It’s about giving them the resources and a place to make a bigger impact.
How did Box support your career aspirations to be in a leadership role?
At Box, you have a team of incredible leaders who are genuinely curious about your goals, your business and want to see you succeed. I have developed incredible mentors who have always been there to chat about deal strategy, listen to my thoughts on the business, or have candid conversations about my career.
From a formal perspective, Box goes above and beyond to make sure there are programs in place to support emerging leaders. For example, when I transitioned from an account executive to a manager, I joined Box’s Manager Academy. This course helps develop managers by placing participants into awesome cross-functional groups of leaders across the business. Box is currently sponsoring my participation in a week-long Executive Program in Women’s Leadership at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, along with four other cross-functional leaders at Box. I’m very grateful for the investment in leadership development, and I’m excited to take what I learn back to uplevel the larger team and build leaders around me.
Caroline Caselli, Enterprise Account Executive
Caroline is on Box’s enterprise East team and is responsible for a territory of roughly 30 accounts in the Northeast.
BEYOND WORK: When she’s not in the office, Caroline enjoys the good, peaceful life – reading, going to art museums, taking a yoga class or just walking around Central Park.
You started at Box’s Silicon Valley office before moving to NYC. What prompted the move?
I joined Box in 2013 at our then-HQ in Los Altos, then moved up to our San Francisco office with no intention of leaving. I grew up in the Bay Area, went to college in the Bay Area, and the majority of my family and friends are in the Bay Area, so it is home. In early 2016, my boss announced that he was moving to New York City to establish our first East Coast office and a few months later, he floated the idea of relocating. I visited once and knew it was the right choice. Professionally, I was drawn to the idea of being a formative part of something new and fast-growing within Box and the opportunities that would inevitably arise as we continued to grow. Personally, I was ready to experience something completely different than the Bay Area. Three years later, it has easily been the best decision I’ve made in my adult life.
I love that we work hard but don’t take ourselves too seriously, from the executive level staff on down.”
As you were moving up the ranks on the sales team, did you have a mentor or any other support?
Thinking back on the last six years, I can quickly identify more than a dozen Boxers who I consider mentors: direct managers, various sales reps and executives, our head of talent and belonging, our COO. Some of them saw my potential when I didn’t see it as clearly and provided me with the encouragement I needed to persevere. Others provided coaching on how to be a better rep, or a recurring lunch to catch up on life and talk through opportunities, or an email to our executive staff to showcase my work more broadly in the organization. But, beyond the mentors, I have a phenomenal support system of peers that I met and have continued to grow with at Box. We have a vibrant group chat and lean on each other daily for career advice, support, the occasional commiseration and lots of laughs.
You have been with the company for a while — has the culture changed at all?
Box has changed in a lot of ways since I joined. We went public. We moved headquarters and, in the process, lost our yellow office slide — though the office gained a lot of other charms. We’ve grown, people-wise, revenue-wise and in terms of our product offering. Fundamentally, though, I believe that the heart of the organization has stayed the same.
To me, Box still feels like a zany startup that made it. I love that we work hard but don’t take ourselves too seriously, from the executive level staff on down. And, I love the traditions we have held onto, like our all-company Friday lunches, which are led by our CEO and streamed across all of our offices. I love our core values and how they permeate throughout all areas of our business, from how we engage with customers to how we hire. Box’s culture is magical, and I am grateful to live it every day.
