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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.

Ben Horowitz

A manager can’t act like a role model. They need to BE a role model.
BEN HOROWITZ

Manager Models Needs Role
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
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
The one thing with stress is, you’ve got to keep your focus on what you can do, not what happened to you.
BEN HOROWITZ

Focus Management Stress
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
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
A key thing in being a leader is you’ve got to pause yourself.
BEN HOROWITZ

Keys Leader Management
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 HOROWITZ

Jobs Skills Training
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
What do you get when you cross a herd of sheep with a herd of lemmings? A herd of venture capitalists.
BEN HOROWITZ

Lemming Sheep Venture
A CEO needs great intelligence and great courage. And I always found my courage was tested more.
BEN HOROWITZ

Entrepreneur Found Needs
There is no silver bullet. There are always options and the options have consequences.
BEN HOROWITZ

Bullets Consequences Silver
Relationships built from a business do better than the reverse.
BEN HOROWITZ

Better Built Relationship Reverse
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
It’s quite possible for an executive to hit her goal for the quarter by ignoring the future.
BEN HOROWITZ

Executive Goal Quarters
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

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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