Ben Horowitz
Ben Horowitz
Ben Horowitzis an American businessman, investor, blogger, and author. He is a high technology entrepreneur and co-founder and general partner along with Marc Andreessen of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He co-founded and served as president and chief executive officer of the enterprise software company Opsware, which Hewlett-Packard acquired for $1.6 billion in cash in July 2007. Horowitz is the author of The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers. In the...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth13 June 1966
Ben Horowitz quotes about
Most large mistakes in organizational design come from putting the individual ambitions of the people at the top of the organization ahead of the communication paths for the people at the bottom of the organization.
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: 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.
As a company grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge.
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.
There are no silver bullets...
One of the great things about building a tech company is the amazing people that you can hire.
Sometimes an organization doesn’t need a solution; it just needs clarity.
Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand.
When raising money, you want to look through the lens of 'What happens when things go wrong?'
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.
In a company, hundreds of decisions get made, but objectives and goals are thin.
The bigger you get, the harder this gets because the more aggressive the people working for you are.
The person they're working with, is going to be the person they'll know more. So if that person leaves, they're going to go - well, should have I left too? What did they get and how does that compare to my deal.
Volatility and length, that's the value on an option. 10 years on a startup stock, that's a big valuable thing.