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Business ends up being very dynamic and situational.

Ben Horowitz

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
You know what the difference between a vision and a hallucination is? They call it a vision when other people can see it.
BEN HOROWITZ

Differences People Vision
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
Relationships built from a business do better than the reverse.
BEN HOROWITZ

Better Built Relationship Reverse
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.
BEN HOROWITZ

Losing Succeed Technique
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
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
I don’t believe in statistics. I believe in calculus.
BEN HOROWITZ

Believe Statistics
The key to high-quality communication is trust, and its hard to trust somebody that you dont know.
BEN HOROWITZ

Communication Keys Quality
Here’s where we are and here’s what I didn’t recognize about us and about you when I made the decision, and now it is what it is.
BEN HOROWITZ

About Decision Made Now Recognize
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
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
Planning is valuable, tho the plan is usually useless.
BEN HOROWITZ

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
The bigger you get, the harder this gets because the more aggressive the people working for you are.
BEN HOROWITZ

Bigger Management People
Hire sales people who are really smart problem solvers, but lack courage, hunger and competitiveness, and your company will go out of business.
BEN HOROWITZ

People Problem Smart

Business ends up being very dynamic and situational.

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Business ends up being very dynamic and situational.

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Popular Authors

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