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If you have never done the job, how do you know what to want?

Ben Horowitz

Early in my career as an engineer, I’d learned that all decisions were objective until the first line of code was written. After that, all decisions were emotional.
BEN HOROWITZ

Career Decision Emotional
Hire sales people who are really smart problem solvers, but lack courage, hunger and competitiveness, and your company will go out of business.
BEN HOROWITZ

People Problem Smart
What do you get when you cross a herd of sheep with a herd of lemmings? A herd of venture capitalists.
BEN HOROWITZ

Lemming Sheep Venture
In a company, hundreds of decisions get made, but objectives and goals are thin.
BEN HOROWITZ

Decision Goal Made
Here’s Kanye, the great musical genius of his generation in hip hop, but, like, society really can’t even deal with him because he’s always saying something that people go, ‘Oh, I can’t believe Kanye said that. I can’t believe he did that.’
BEN HOROWITZ

Believe Musical Genius People
Most large mistakes in organizational design come from putting the individual ambitions of the people at the top of the organization ahead of the communication paths for the people at the bottom of the organization.
BEN HOROWITZ

Ambition Communication Mistakes
How do you make your company a good place to work in general? That’s a really really really large and complex set of skills.
BEN HOROWITZ

Jobs Skills Training
A manager can’t act like a role model. They need to BE a role model.
BEN HOROWITZ

Manager Models Needs Role
You know what the difference between a vision and a hallucination is? They call it a vision when other people can see it.
BEN HOROWITZ

Differences People Vision
Business ends up being very dynamic and situational.
BEN HOROWITZ

Business Dynamic Ends Situation
In life, you don’t have a level of confrontation and the nonsense you run into when you’re a CEO. CEOs aren’t born.
BEN HOROWITZ

Levels Nonsense Running
In life, everybody faces choices between doing what’s popular, easy, and wrong vs. doing what’s lonely, difficult, and right.
BEN HOROWITZ

Decision Lonely Running
In my experience as CEO, I found that the most important decisions tested my courage far more than my intelligence.
BEN HOROWITZ

Decision Found Important
One of the great things about building a tech company is the amazing people that you can hire.
BEN HOROWITZ

Building Great People Things
There are no silver bullets.
BEN HOROWITZ

Bullets Growth No Silver
You don’t need every investor to believe that you can succeed. You only need one.
BEN HOROWITZ

Believe Inspiration Needs

If you have never done the job, how do you know what to want?

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If you have never done the job, how do you know what to want?

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