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The trouble with innovation is that truly innovative ideas often look like bad ideas at the time.

Ben Horowitz

Business ends up being very dynamic and situational.
BEN HOROWITZ

Business Dynamic Ends Situation
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.
BEN HOROWITZ

Date Example Majority Problem Result
There are no silver bullets.
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Bullets Growth No Silver
Over the last ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.
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Bar Company Lasts Lower Years
Planning is valuable, tho the plan is usually useless.
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Planning Useless Valuable
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
There is no silver bullet. There are always options and the options have consequences.
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Bullets Consequences Silver
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
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
One of the great things about building a tech company is the amazing people that you can hire.
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Building Great People Things
To succeed at selling a losing product, you must develop seriously superior sales techniques. In addition, you have to be massively competitive and incredibly hungry to survive in that environment.
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Losing Succeed Technique
The only thing that prepares you to run a company is running a company.
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Company Repair Running
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
Don’t punk out and don’t quit.
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Inspirational Motivational Quit
Relationships built from a business do better than the reverse.
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Better Built Relationship Reverse
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.
BEN HOROWITZ

Ambition Communication Mistakes
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
The right answer on raises is you have to be formal. You have to be formal to save your own culture.
BEN HOROWITZ

Answer Culture Management
Note to self: It’s a good idea to ask, “What am I not doing?
BEN HOROWITZ

Ask Good Ideas Notes Self
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
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
You’re better off being The Beatles than The Monkees, as a startup.
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Better Startup
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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Choice Courageous Decision
What do you get when you cross a herd of sheep with a herd of lemmings? A herd of venture capitalists.
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Lemming Sheep Venture
In a company, hundreds of decisions get made, but objectives and goals are thin.
BEN HOROWITZ

Decision Goal Made
The person they’re working with, is going to be the person they’ll know more. So if that person leaves, they’re going to go – well, should have I left too? What did they get and how does that compare to my deal.
BEN HOROWITZ

Company Deal Leaves Management
Your employees know each other better than they know you.
BEN HOROWITZ

Employee Knows Management

The trouble with innovation is that truly innovative ideas often look like bad ideas at the time.

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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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Popular Authors

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