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It’s quite possible for an executive to hit her goal for the quarter by ignoring the future.

Ben Horowitz

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
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
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.
BEN HOROWITZ

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

Lenses Looks Want
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
Breakthrough ideas usually come from guys who look like they’re hallucinating
BEN HOROWITZ

Guy Hallucinating Ideas Looks
You don’t need every investor to believe that you can succeed. You only need one.
BEN HOROWITZ

Believe Inspiration Needs
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
I don’t believe in statistics. I believe in calculus.
BEN HOROWITZ

Believe Statistics
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
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
There are no silver bullets.
BEN HOROWITZ

Bullets Growth No Silver
The bigger you get, the harder this gets because the more aggressive the people working for you are.
BEN HOROWITZ

Bigger Management People
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
Until you make the effort to get to know someone or something, you don’t know anything.
BEN HOROWITZ

Anything Effort Knows Someone Something

It’s quite possible for an executive to hit her goal for the quarter by ignoring the future.

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It’s quite possible for an executive to hit her goal for the quarter by ignoring the future.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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