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It turns out that is exactly what product strategy is all about—figuring out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job.

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
The person they’re working with, is going to be the person they’ll know more. So if that person leaves, they’re going to go – well, should have I left too? What did they get and how does that compare to my deal.
BEN HOROWITZ

Company Deal Leaves Management
A lot of it is on the job training, combined with excellent mentorship.
BEN HOROWITZ

Excellent Job Lot Mentorship Training
Planning is valuable, tho the plan is usually useless.
BEN HOROWITZ

Planning Useless Valuable
A manager can’t act like a role model. They need to BE a role model.
BEN HOROWITZ

Manager Models Needs Role
It’s pretty clear that [customers] know what their budgets are now, and what they want to spend it on.
BEN HOROWITZ

Clear Customer Want
Your employees know each other better than they know you.
BEN HOROWITZ

Employee Knows Management
The bigger you get, the harder this gets because the more aggressive the people working for you are.
BEN HOROWITZ

Bigger Management People
When I was CEO, and I’d listen to music, a lot of people listen to music and you get inspiration from it. And a lot of things in hip hop are very instructive for being in business. Particularly, hip hop is a lot about business, and so it was very useful for me in any job.
BEN HOROWITZ

Express Inspiration Jobs People
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
One of the great things about building a tech company is the amazing people that you can hire.
BEN HOROWITZ

Building Great People Things
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
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
Relationships built from a business do better than the reverse.
BEN HOROWITZ

Better Built Relationship Reverse
These decisions intensify when you run a company, because the consequences get magnified 1,000 fold. As in life, the excuses for CEOs making the wrong choice are always plentiful.
BEN HOROWITZ

Choice Consequences Life Magnified Plentiful Wrong
There are no shortcuts to knowledge, especially knowledge gained from personal experience. Following conventional wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all.
BEN HOROWITZ

Knowing Knowledge Gain Nothing Shortcut

It turns out that is exactly what product strategy is all about—figuring out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job.

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It turns out that is exactly what product strategy is all about—figuring out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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