Chief Operating Officer, Box
Search every verified Olivia Nottebohm interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Olivia Nottebohm, Chief Operating Officer at Box, stated in a November 2024 video that AI is evolving faster than any other technology she has seen, with progress measured in weeks rather than months or years. She emphasized that teams designing AI-powered offerings should focus on solving customer problems and ensuring solutions are future-proof. In a September 2021 interview while serving as COO of Dropbox, Nottebohm discussed the future of work, describing the company as a "Switzerland platform" that integrates with tools like Zoom and Slack. She noted that remote work led to a 20x increase in Zoom integrations on Dropbox and argued that distributed work offers opportunities to hire more diverse candidates. Nottebohm also stressed the importance of overcommunication in remote environments, setting goals for accountability, and being kind to oneself during periods of change.
“First and foremost everything needs to be future proof and I think people are doing that today but it is less about what AI can currently do and what power it has today and more about okay as you imagine the evolution of it which as we see is incredibly fast faster frankly than I've seen any other evolution in Tech bec...”
“As teams are designing an offering or a solution, first are always focused on the customer right they have to be solving a problem for the customer whether it's on the consumer side or the business side right so of course that has to be the number one Focus area is the customer and the end user itself.”
“We saw Zoom integrations go up by 20x. We saw Atlassian and Slack all being used while on the Dropbox platform, so we could see, okay, these are folks that are working from home. They're using us for their inflow work and they're trying to focus and get their job done kind of in the middle of all that's around them.”
“One of the ones that I care passionately about is diversity. I think, and the leadership at Dropbox believes, that the more distributed remote work that we have, the more opportunity we have to hire and engage candidates that otherwise might not want to move into the hub of the Bay Area or the hub of New York or some o...”
“We view ourselves as a platform, a Switzerland platform, in which our customers and our users can use different applications that they need to do their job but in a very, very seamless way. They're able to be on the Dropbox platform but they're popping into Zoom, they're using Slack, or they're using Atlassian – you na...”
“We have hundreds of millions of users and we take that very seriously. We know that they're there because they love the product and they love the ease of use. For us, we want to make sure to continue to do that. Our history has been this bottom-up adoption of people all over the world that just love the product and we...”
“I think you can't overcommunicate in a remote world. I think that would be my primary thought. It's important to communicate on all fronts, both how we're going to set boundaries between work and everyday life; how we're going to focus the company, set goals for the company, and deliver on the things that we said we'd...”
“It was almost awe – I mean it was awe-inspiring and almost unbelievable. One day, we were in the office. We had a meeting. We decided, okay, we'd be working from home. I didn't notice any difference. That just is a huge testimony to an IT team. It was really, really incredible how our entire employee base was able to b...”
“If I were to just break it down, one of the dimensions in terms of the future of work is, again, this intentionality of when do you need to get in a car and drive to the office and be with other people in a physical room. Then when actually are there immense benefits of working remote and distributed, really being purp...”
“I firmly believe, and as the leadership at Dropbox, we firmly believe, should give us and we see it. When we offer more flexibility, we get more diverse candidates. That's really important to us and we have that as a key value for our company.”
“Accountability is key. I firmly believe that. In life, even if it's setting self-goals for yourself or setting team goals if you're on a soccer team, like my daughter is, or at work, you set goals because that holds you and the folks working towards it accountable to try to achieve those goals. Not only do you set the...”
“I would say, just be kind to yourself. It's a hard time. There have been a lot of changes. I know I make mistakes every day. We all will make mistakes as we're on this journey. But learning from those mistakes and understanding, okay, this is a new world for me. How do I operate in this world?”
Olivia Nottebohm, COO at Box, emphasizes the importance of designing AI-powered offerings that not only solve customer ...
What is the future of work, collaboration, virtual teams, distributed workforces, and work from home? The Chief Operating Officer of ...
Sign in to search the full transcript archive, filter by topic, and access every quote from Olivia Nottebohm.
The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →