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Over the last ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.

Ben Horowitz

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

Lenses Looks Want
Nothing motivates a great employee more than a mission that’s so important that it supersedes everyone’s personal ambition.
BEN HOROWITZ

Ambition Important Mission
As a startup CEO, I slept like a baby. I woke up every 2 hours and cried.
BEN HOROWITZ

Baby Hours Motivation
As a company grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge.
BEN HOROWITZ

Challenges Communication Company
Your employees know each other better than they know you.
BEN HOROWITZ

Employee Knows Management
It’s hard in daily life. It’s even harder in management because it’s the stress of the moment.
BEN HOROWITZ

Daily Life Management Stress
In life, you don’t have a level of confrontation and the nonsense you run into when you’re a CEO. CEOs aren’t born.
BEN HOROWITZ

Levels Nonsense Running
You’re better off being The Beatles than The Monkees, as a startup.
BEN HOROWITZ

Better Startup
Don’t punk out and don’t quit.
BEN HOROWITZ

Inspirational Motivational Quit
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
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.
BEN HOROWITZ

Customer Figuring Jobs Product Strategy Turns
The trouble with innovation is that truly innovative ideas often look like bad ideas at the time.
BEN HOROWITZ

Ideas Innovation Looks
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
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
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

Over the last ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.

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Over the last ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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