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

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
Leadership is hard to train on.
BEN HOROWITZ

Hard Leadership Train
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

Customer Figuring Jobs Product Strategy Turns
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
When raising money, you want to look through the lens of ‘What happens when things go wrong?’
BEN HOROWITZ

Lenses Looks Want
You’re better off being The Beatles than The Monkees, as a startup.
BEN HOROWITZ

Better Startup
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
The only thing that prepares you to run a company is running a company.
BEN HOROWITZ

Company Repair Running
I believe in strength over lack of weakness.
BEN HOROWITZ

Believe Strength Weakness
I don’t believe in statistics. I believe in calculus.
BEN HOROWITZ

Believe Statistics
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
As a company grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge.
BEN HOROWITZ

Challenges Communication Company
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
Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand.
BEN HOROWITZ

Book Enemy Fighting
Groupon looked like a very high valuation, but any investment in a great company at any stage is almost always a good investment.
BEN HOROWITZ

Great Company Investment Stage
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

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

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Popular Authors

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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