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In Silicon Valley, when you’re a private company, the entrepreneur can do no wrong.

Ben Horowitz

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

Lenses Looks Want
Don’t punk out and don’t quit.
BEN HOROWITZ

Inspirational Motivational Quit
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
It’s quite possible for an executive to hit her goal for the quarter by ignoring the future.
BEN HOROWITZ

Executive Goal Quarters
Relationships built from a business do better than the reverse.
BEN HOROWITZ

Better Built Relationship Reverse
As a company grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge.
BEN HOROWITZ

Challenges Communication Company
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
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
The only thing that prepares you to run a company is running a company.
BEN HOROWITZ

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

Communication Keys Quality
Your employees know each other better than they know you.
BEN HOROWITZ

Employee Knows Management
Leadership is hard to train on.
BEN HOROWITZ

Hard Leadership Train
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
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

In Silicon Valley, when you’re a private company, the entrepreneur can do no wrong.

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In Silicon Valley, when you’re a private company, the entrepreneur can do no wrong.

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