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When raising money, you want to look through the lens of ‘What happens when things go wrong?’

Ben Horowitz

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

Ideas Innovation Looks
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
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
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
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
There is no silver bullet. There are always options and the options have consequences.
BEN HOROWITZ

Bullets Consequences Silver
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
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
Mark [Andressen] was more popular than me at the time … He was like Beyoncé, I was Kelly Rowlings
BEN HOROWITZ

Beyonce Mark More Popular Time
Business ends up being very dynamic and situational.
BEN HOROWITZ

Business Dynamic Ends Situation
One of the great things about building a tech company is the amazing people that you can hire.
BEN HOROWITZ

Building Great People Things
There are no silver bullets.
BEN HOROWITZ

Bullets Growth No Silver
Don’t punk out and don’t quit.
BEN HOROWITZ

Inspirational Motivational Quit
There are no shortcuts to knowledge, especially knowledge gained from personal experience. Following conventional wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all.
BEN HOROWITZ

Knowing Knowledge Gain Nothing Shortcut
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
In life, everybody faces choices between doing what’s popular, easy, and wrong vs. doing what’s lonely, difficult, and right.
BEN HOROWITZ

Decision Lonely Running

When raising money, you want to look through the lens of ‘What happens when things go wrong?’

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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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Popular Authors

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