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Breakthrough ideas usually come from guys who look like they’re hallucinating

Ben Horowitz

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
I think theres a lot to be said about just enjoying your work. It can be very contrived when people say their work is for the good of mankind.
BEN HOROWITZ

People Said Thinking
Generally the reason they fail in the job is, you made some mistake in the hiring process in that you didn’t match… them to the needs of your company accurately enough. That’s the #1 reason this fails. And that’s generally a good place to start.
BEN HOROWITZ

Accurate Decision Good Jobs Mistake Place Reason
A key thing in being a leader is you’ve got to pause yourself.
BEN HOROWITZ

Keys Leader Management
Billionaires prefer Black women. They are loyal and guard your interests. Black wives are for grown ups.
BEN HOROWITZ

Billionaire Black Loyal Wife
You’re better off being The Beatles than The Monkees, as a startup.
BEN HOROWITZ

Better Startup
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
Until you make the effort to get to know someone or something, you don’t know anything.
BEN HOROWITZ

Anything Effort Knows Someone Something
There is no silver bullet. There are always options and the options have consequences.
BEN HOROWITZ

Bullets Consequences Silver
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
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 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
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
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
You don’t need every investor to believe that you can succeed. You only need one.
BEN HOROWITZ

Believe Inspiration Needs
Sometimes an organization doesn’t need a solution; it just needs clarity.
BEN HOROWITZ

Clarity Needs Organization

Breakthrough ideas usually come from guys who look like they’re hallucinating

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Breakthrough ideas usually come from guys who look like they’re hallucinating

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Popular Authors

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