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Nothing motivates a great employee more than a mission that’s so important that it supersedes everyone’s personal ambition.

Ben Horowitz

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

Decision Goal Made
You can take somebody’s job, you have to take their job, but you don’t have to take their dignity.
BEN HOROWITZ

Dignity Jobs Management
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
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.
BEN HOROWITZ

Levels Nonsense Running
Your employees know each other better than they know you.
BEN HOROWITZ

Employee Knows Management
There are no silver bullets.
BEN HOROWITZ

Bullets Growth No Silver
Volatility and length, that’s the value on an option. 10 years on a startup stock, that’s a big valuable thing.
BEN HOROWITZ

Length Management Years
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
If you have never done the job, how do you know what to want?
BEN HOROWITZ

Done Jobs never Want
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
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
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
There are no silver bullets.
BEN HOROWITZ

Bullets Growth No Silver
The one thing with stress is, you’ve got to keep your focus on what you can do, not what happened to you.
BEN HOROWITZ

Focus Management Stress
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.
BEN HOROWITZ

Kind Moving Quality

Nothing motivates a great employee more than a mission that’s so important that it supersedes everyone’s personal ambition.

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Nothing motivates a great employee more than a mission that’s so important that it supersedes everyone’s personal ambition.

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Popular Authors

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