Ben Horowitz Quotes

Until you make the effort to get to know someone or something, you don't know anything.

You can't worry about the mistakes, because you're going to make a lot of them. You've got to be thinking about your next move.

I don't believe in statistics. I believe in calculus.

A key thing in being a leader is you've got to pause yourself.

Most of my job and most of what I do is to mentor people. There are a lot of people I work with that I don't have investments in.

A CEO needs great intelligence and great courage. And I always found my courage was tested more.

Often any decision, even the wrong decision, is better than no decision.

In Silicon Valley, when you're a private company, the entrepreneur can do no wrong.

When screening engineers from other companies, its smart to value engineers from great companies more than those from mediocre companies.

One of the great things about building a tech company is the amazing people that you can hire.

Good shareholder activists have incredible interest in the company because they own a lot of it.

One of the things I say to people is: Imagine if we succeeded.

Bill Campbell: "It's not about the money."
Ben Horowitz: "What's it about, Bill?"
Bill: "It's about the FUCKING money.

If somebody's going on your board, and you're going to be C.E.O., it will help if that person knows how to be C.E.O., who has done it before.

The first rule of the C.E.O. psychological meltdown is 'Don't talk about the psychological meltdown.'

You're better off being The Beatles than The Monkees, as a startup ...

The only thing that prepares you to run a company is running a company.

There are no silver bullets ...

It helps to have founded and run a company if you're going to help somebody run a company who is a founder.

Every employee in a company depends on the C.E.O. to make fast, high-quality decisions.

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.

The technique is marvelously described in the classic management text The One Minute Manager.

One person is never as stupid as a group of people. That's why they have lynch mobs, not lynch individuals.

I'm a huge believer in clarity.

It's pretty clear that [customers] know what their budgets are now, and what they want to spend it on.

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

work long hours to advance the career of my

In boxing, you get hit, it's painful, then you sit on the stool when the adrenaline is gone and you feel that pain. And then you fight the next round.

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.

The Struggle is when you go on vacation to feel better and you feel worse.

Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand. Peacetime

Nothing motivates a great employee more than a mission that's so important that it supersedes everyone's personal ambition.

a company needs lots of smart, super-engaged employees who can identify its particular weaknesses and help it improve them.

you need to ask yourself, "If our company isn't good enough to win, then do we need to exist at all?

You can take somebody's job, you have to take their job, but you don't have to take their dignity.

The key to high-quality communication is trust, and it's hard to trust somebody that you don't know.

DOGS AT WORK AND YOGA AREN'T CULTURE Startups

Ben: "If you need me, I will come home." Felicia: "No. Get the IPO done. There is no tomorrow for you and the company. I'll be fine.

You have to be responsible when you're running an organization, and firing people who are your friends is part of that responsibility.

The big value of the founder running the company is really two things: the knowledge and the commitment.

Business ends up being very dynamic and situational.

Note to self: It's a good idea to ask, What am I not doing?

Billionaires prefer Black women. They are loyal and guard your interests. Black wives are for grown ups.

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.

Perks are good, but they are not culture.

As a startup CEO, I slept like a baby. I woke up every 2 hours and cried.

If you don't have world-class strengths where you need them, you won't be a world-class company.

The one thing with stress is, you've got to keep your focus on what you can do, not what happened to you.

You don't need every investor to believe that you can succeed. You only need one.

There is no silver bullet. There are always options and the options have consequences.

Rap helps me connect emotionally.

If I have one skill as a manager, I can make things extremely clear.

Nobody knows how to be a CEO. It's something you have to learn. It's a very lonely job.

I think that business book reporting, it's all Jim Collins, it's the story of victory; it's success bias over and over again.

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

The first rule of organizational design is that all organizational designs are bad.

Sometimes an organization doesn't need a solution; it just needs clarity.

If you don't know what you want, the chances that you'll get it are extremely low.

A wartime C.E.O. may not delegate. They make every decision based on the next product release. They may use a lot of profanity.

I describe the CEO job as knowing what to do and getting the company to do what you want. Designing

Your employees know each other better than they know you.

even if we laid off 100 percent of the employees, the infrastructure costs would still kill us without a sharper sales ramp.

I think there's 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.

Breakthrough ideas usually come from guys who look like they're hallucinating

A manager can't act like a role model. They need to BE a role model.

The first thing to recognize is that no startup has time to do optional things.

MANAGING STRICTLY BY NUMBERS IS LIKE PAINTING BY NUMBERS

Groupon looked like a very high valuation, but any investment in a great company at any stage is almost always a good investment.

As the great self-help coach Tony Robbins says, "If you don't know what you want, the chances that you'll get it are extremely low." If

If you treat them like children, then get ready for your company to turn into one big Barney episode.

Shareholder activism works when activists understand something about the characteristics of the business that the board doesn't.

In my experience as CEO, I found that the most important decisions tested my courage far more than my intelligence.

Big companies have trouble with innovation. Innovation is about bad ideas, or ideas that look like bad ideas. That's the fundamental thing.

Hire sales people who are really smart problem solvers, but lack courage, hunger and competitiveness, and your company will go out of business.

Nobody is actually a natural C.E.O.

In a company, hundreds of decisions get made, but objectives and goals are thin.

Leadership is hard to train on.

Don't punk out and don't quit.

As a company grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge.

What do you get when you cross a herd of sheep with a herd of lemmings? A herd of venture capitalists.

It is very helpful to me, in my job, for people to know me better. A lot of that is, it's a communication job.

you do nothing else, be like Bill and build a

Volatility and length, that's the value on an option. 10 years on a startup stock, that's a big valuable thing.

Relationships built from a business do better than the reverse.

How will your new job differ from your current job?

People say the most important thing is building a world-class team.

Dr. Seuss's management masterpiece Yertle the Turtle. SCREENING

I try to help people with management stuff a lot.

It's hard in daily life. It's even harder in management because it's the stress of the moment.

Training is, quite simply, one of the highest-leverage activities a manager can perform.