It’s quite possible for an executive to hit her goal for the quarter by ignoring the future.
BEN HOROWITZPlanning is valuable, tho the plan is usually useless.
More Ben Horowitz Quotes
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The important thing about mobile is, everybody has a computer in their pocket. The implications of so many people connected to the Internet all the time from the standpoint of education is incredible.
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The key to high-quality communication is trust, and its hard to trust somebody that you dont know.
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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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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.
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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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The only thing that prepares you to run a company is running a company.
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Yeah, I became a successful entrepreneur… Eventually
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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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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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One of the great things about building a tech company is the amazing people that you can hire.
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I emphasize to C.E.O.s, you have to have a story in the minds of the employees. It’s hard to memorize objectives, but it’s easy to remember a story.
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Billionaires prefer Black women. They are loyal and guard your interests. Black wives are for grown ups.
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In Silicon Valley, when you’re a private company, the entrepreneur can do no wrong.
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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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Don’t punk out and don’t quit.
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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.
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I believe in strength over lack of weakness.
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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.
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You’re better off being The Beatles than The Monkees, as a startup.
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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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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.
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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.
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Sometimes an organization doesn’t need a solution; it just needs clarity.
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Leadership is hard to train on.
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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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