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 HOROWITZI don’t believe in statistics. I believe in calculus.
More Ben Horowitz Quotes
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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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Your employees know each other better than they know you.
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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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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.
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A manager can’t act like a role model. They need to BE a role model.
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Mark [Andressen] was more popular than me at the time … He was like Beyoncé, I was Kelly Rowlings
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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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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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Leadership is hard to train on.
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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 raising money, you want to look through the lens of ‘What happens when things go wrong?’
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A CEO needs great intelligence and great courage. And I always found my courage was tested more.
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A key thing in being a leader is you’ve got to pause yourself.
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If you have never done the job, how do you know what to want?
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One of the great things about building a tech company is the amazing people that you can hire.
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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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The bigger you get, the harder this gets because the more aggressive the people working for you are.
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Business ends up being very dynamic and situational.
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The right answer on raises is you have to be formal. You have to be formal to save your own culture.
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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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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.
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There is no silver bullet. There are always options and the options have consequences.
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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.
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The only thing that prepares you to run a company is running a company.
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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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You know what the difference between a vision and a hallucination is? They call it a vision when other people can see it.
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