Aaron Levie talks cloud storage at BoxWorks. Photo: Michael O'Donnell/ZatPhoto

On first pass, Aaron Levie is your typical 20-something Silicon Valley CEO. Jeans. Orange sneakers. Unkempt hair. And in many ways, his company, Box.net, is a typical Silicon Valley story. Friends build product in dorm room. Product takes off. Friends drop out of school and land millions of dollars in investment capital.

But with its peer-to-peer file sharing application, Box.net operates in a different space than the typical Silicon Valley startup. It’s an enterprise outfit. Drawing on their lives as consumers, y...