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

Ben Horowitz

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

Decision Goal Made
Leadership is hard to train on.
BEN HOROWITZ

Hard Leadership Train
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
Note to self: It’s a good idea to ask, “What am I not doing?
BEN HOROWITZ

Ask Good Ideas Notes Self
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
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
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
Business ends up being very dynamic and situational.
BEN HOROWITZ

Business Dynamic Ends Situation
You’re better off being The Beatles than The Monkees, as a startup.
BEN HOROWITZ

Better Startup
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
Yeah, I became a successful entrepreneur… Eventually
BEN HOROWITZ

Become Entrepreneur Successful
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
When raising money, you want to look through the lens of ‘What happens when things go wrong?’
BEN HOROWITZ

Lenses Looks Want
The only thing that prepares you to run a company is running a company.
BEN HOROWITZ

Company Repair Running
Don’t punk out and don’t quit.
BEN HOROWITZ

Inspirational Motivational Quit
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

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

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

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Popular Authors

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