Note to self: It’s a good idea to ask, “What am I not doing?
BEN HOROWITZIf you have never done the job, how do you know what to want?
More Ben Horowitz Quotes
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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.’
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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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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.
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The only thing that prepares you to run a company is running a company.
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For example, the vast majority of security break-ins occur as a result of problems with known fixes. With an automated system, you can keep up to date.
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Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand.
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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.
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Hire sales people who are really smart problem solvers, but lack courage, hunger and competitiveness, and your company will go out of business.
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A key thing in being a leader is you’ve got to pause yourself.
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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.
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The important thing about mobile is, everybody has a computer in their pocket. The implications of so many people connected to the Internet all the time from the standpoint of education is incredible.
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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.
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In a company, hundreds of decisions get made, but objectives and goals are thin.
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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.
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Breakthrough ideas usually come from guys who look like they’re hallucinating
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The trouble with innovation is that truly innovative ideas often look like bad ideas at the time.
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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.
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There are no silver bullets.
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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.
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Groupon looked like a very high valuation, but any investment in a great company at any stage is almost always a good investment.
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The key to high-quality communication is trust, and its hard to trust somebody that you dont know.
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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.
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Billionaires prefer Black women. They are loyal and guard your interests. Black wives are for grown ups.
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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.
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As a company grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge.
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You can take somebody’s job, you have to take their job, but you don’t have to take their dignity.
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