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Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous, and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly. If you are CEO, these choices will lead to a courageous or cowardly company.

Ben Horowitz

Leadership is hard to train on.
BEN HOROWITZ

Hard Leadership Train
Nothing motivates a great employee more than a mission that’s so important that it supersedes everyone’s personal ambition.
BEN HOROWITZ

Ambition Important Mission
There are no silver bullets.
BEN HOROWITZ

Bullets Growth No Silver
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
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
It’s quite possible for an executive to hit her goal for the quarter by ignoring the future.
BEN HOROWITZ

Executive Goal Quarters
A key thing in being a leader is you’ve got to pause yourself.
BEN HOROWITZ

Keys Leader Management
To succeed at selling a losing product, you must develop seriously superior sales techniques. In addition, you have to be massively competitive and incredibly hungry to survive in that environment.
BEN HOROWITZ

Losing Succeed Technique
Sometimes an organization doesn’t need a solution; it just needs clarity.
BEN HOROWITZ

Clarity Needs Organization
Mark [Andressen] was more popular than me at the time … He was like Beyoncé, I was Kelly Rowlings
BEN HOROWITZ

Beyonce Mark More Popular Time
When you’re making a critical decision, you have to understand how it’s going to be interpreted from all points of view. Not just your point of view, not just the person you’re talking to, but the people that aren’t in the room. Everybody else.
BEN HOROWITZ

Critical Decisions Talking Views
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
A CEO needs great intelligence and great courage. And I always found my courage was tested more.
BEN HOROWITZ

Entrepreneur Found Needs
Over the last ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.
BEN HOROWITZ

Bar Company Lasts Lower Years
You’re better off being The Beatles than The Monkees, as a startup.
BEN HOROWITZ

Better Startup
The key to high-quality communication is trust, and its hard to trust somebody that you dont know.
BEN HOROWITZ

Communication Keys Quality
As companies move to web-based computing they get a lot more servers, which are difficult to manage and control. All kinds of problems can arise – security, quality and worms.
BEN HOROWITZ

Kind Moving Quality
Your employees know each other better than they know you.
BEN HOROWITZ

Employee Knows Management
Business ends up being very dynamic and situational.
BEN HOROWITZ

Business Dynamic Ends Situation
A manager can’t act like a role model. They need to BE a role model.
BEN HOROWITZ

Manager Models Needs Role
I emphasize to C.E.O.s, you have to have a story in the minds of the employees. It’s hard to memorize objectives, but it’s easy to remember a story.
BEN HOROWITZ

Mind Remember Stories
It’s hard in daily life. It’s even harder in management because it’s the stress of the moment.
BEN HOROWITZ

Daily Life Management Stress
Here’s where we are and here’s what I didn’t recognize about us and about you when I made the decision, and now it is what it is.
BEN HOROWITZ

About Decision Made Now Recognize
The right answer on raises is you have to be formal. You have to be formal to save your own culture.
BEN HOROWITZ

Answer Culture Management
Breakthrough ideas usually come from guys who look like they’re hallucinating
BEN HOROWITZ

Guy Hallucinating Ideas Looks
One of the great things about building a tech company is the amazing people that you can hire.
BEN HOROWITZ

Building Great People Things
When raising money, you want to look through the lens of ‘What happens when things go wrong?’
BEN HOROWITZ

Lenses Looks Want

Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous, and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly. If you are CEO, these choices will lead to a courageous or cowardly company.

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Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous, and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly. If you are CEO, these choices will lead to a courageous or cowardly company.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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