Ben Horowitz Quotes & Sayings

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

The customer only knows what she thinks she wants based on her experience with the current product. The innovator can take into account everything that's possible, but often must go against what she knows to be true. As a result, innovation requires a combination of knowledge, skill, and courage. Sometimes only the founder has the courage to ignore the data; — Ben Horowitz

Dr. Seuss's management masterpiece Yertle the Turtle. SCREENING — Ben Horowitz

I do think a lot of people are trying to do important things still, and I think it is really a great thing that entrepreneurship is getting easier. When I started, it was just much harder to begin a company. — Ben Horowitz

While executives don't age nearly as fast as athletes do, companies, markets, and technologies change a thousand times faster than the game of football. As — Ben Horowitz

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

I'm a huge believer in clarity. — Ben Horowitz

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

Gentlemen, I've done many deals in my lifetime and through that process, I've developed a methodology, a way of doing things, a philosophy if you will. Within that philosophy, I have certain beliefs. I believe in artificial deadlines. I believe in playing one against the other. I believe in doing everything and anything short of illegal or immoral to get the damned deal done. — Ben Horowitz

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. — Ben Horowitz

The laws of business physics have been broken in terms of how many customers you can acquire and how fast. No one in history has ever acquired 450 million customers in the same amount of time that WhatsApp did. — Ben Horowitz

The thing that's confusing for investors is that founders don't know how to be CEO. I didn't know how to do the job when I was a CEO. Founder CEOs don't know how to be CEOs, but it doesn't mean they can't learn. The question is ... can the founder learn that job and can they tolerate all mistakes they will make doing it? — Ben Horowitz

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

I try to help people with management stuff a lot. — Ben Horowitz

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

The bad thing about young people starting a company is that sometimes they do it for the wrong reasons or because they have the wrong skill set, but the good thing is that they don't have any of the old paradigms baked into them, so they have a lot of the bright new ideas that are harder to come by as you get older. — Ben Horowitz

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

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

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

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

A good engineering interview will include some set of difficult problems to solve. It might even require that the candidate write a short program. In addition, it will test the candidate's knowledge of the tools she uses in great depth. — Ben Horowitz

work long hours to advance the career of my — Ben Horowitz

You read these management books that say, 'These are the hard things about running a company.' But those aren't really the hard things. The hard things are when you have to layoff half your company, or you have to fire your best friend. Or you have to figure out a way not to go bankrupt. — Ben Horowitz

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

Rap helps me connect emotionally. — Ben Horowitz

THE FINE LINE BETWEEN FEAR AND COURAGE "I tell my kids, what is the difference between a hero and a coward? What is the difference between being yellow and being brave? No difference. Only what you do. They both feel the same. They both fear dying and getting hurt. The man who is yellow refuses to face up to what he's got to face. The hero is more disciplined and he fights those feelings off and he does what he has to do. But they both feel the same, the hero and the coward. People who watch you judge you on what you do, not how you feel." - CUS D'AMATO, LEGENDARY BOXING TRAINER — Ben Horowitz

John D. Rockefeller said that he found friendships based on business to be far more long lasting and profitable than the reverse. I think there's something to that. A company can end up being very Confucian, where the good of the individual is subjugated to the good of the whole. — Ben Horowitz

Ben, those silver bullets that you and Mike are looking for are fine and good, but our Web server is five times slower. There is no silver bullet that's going to fix that. No, we are going to have to use a lot of lead bullets." Oh snap. — Ben Horowitz

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

By far the most difficult skill I learned as a C.E.O. was the ability to manage my own psychology. Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared with keeping my mind in check. — Ben Horowitz

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

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

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

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

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

The important thing about mobile is, everybody has a computer in their pocket. The implications of so many people connected to the Internet all the time from the standpoint of education is incredible. — Ben Horowitz

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

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

DOGS AT WORK AND YOGA AREN'T CULTURE Startups — Ben Horowitz

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

In my own experience as a C.E.O., I would find myself laying awake at 3 A.M. asking questions about my business, and there weren't management books out there that could help me. — Ben Horowitz

When you're making a critical decision, you have to understand how it's going to be interpreted from all points of view. Not just your point of view, not just the person you're talking to, but the people that aren't in the room. Everybody else. — Ben Horowitz

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

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

Either people challenge each other to the point where they don't like each other or they become complacent about each other's feedback and no longer benefit from the relationship. — Ben Horowitz

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

you do nothing else, be like Bill and build a — Ben Horowitz

The most important thing you can learn as CEO- one of the hardest things to do is, you have to discipline yourself to see your company ... through the eyes of the people that you're working through. Through the eyes of the employees, through the eyes of your partners ... through the eyes of the people who you're not talking to and who are not in the room. — Ben Horowitz

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

Consider scheduling a daily meeting with your new executive. Require them to bring a comprehensive set of questions about everything they heard that day but did not completely understand. — Ben Horowitz

We take care of the people, the products, and the profits - in that order." It's a simple saying, but it's deep. "Taking care of the people" is the most difficult of the three by far and if you don't do it, the other two won't matter. Taking — Ben Horowitz

As long as people are clear on what they need to do and what's going on, you're very likely to succeed. When nobody is clear, then you're guaranteed to fail. — Ben Horowitz

I was an executive running a pretty substantial group before becoming CEO, and I had no idea what it was like. When something goes wrong, people say, 'It's all your fault.' Your reaction is, 'It's not my fault.' But what do you mean? I was the founder, I hired everybody in the company, I was managing it. — Ben Horowitz

Look - this is the terror of being a founder & CEO. It is all your fault. Every decision, every person you hire, every dumb thing you buy or do - ultimately, you're at the end. — Ben Horowitz

I think when companies are struggling, they don't want to talk to the press. The guys who write business books aren't interested in it because nobody wants to learn what it's like to be a mess, you want to learn how to be successful. That's slanted the whole thing quite a bit. — Ben Horowitz

Going public today is fraught with peril on many levels. One is earnings guidance. If you miss guidance, the stock price becomes very volatile. Short sellers can put a tremendous downward pressure on the stock. — Ben Horowitz

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. — Ben Horowitz

There are two kinds of cultures in this world: cultures where what you do matters and cultures where all that matters is who you are. You can be the former or you can suck. — Ben Horowitz

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

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

The Struggle is when you wonder why you started the company in the first place. The Struggle is when people ask you why you don't quit and you don't know the answer. The Struggle is when your employees think you are lying and you think they may be right. The Struggle is when food loses its taste. The Struggle is when you don't believe you should be CEO of your company. The Struggle is when you know that you are in over your head and you know that you cannot be replaced. The Struggle is when everybody thinks you are an idiot, but nobody will fire you. The Struggle is where self-doubt becomes self-hatred. The Struggle is when you are having a conversation with someone and you can't hear a word that they are saying because all you can hear is the Struggle. — Ben Horowitz

Startup CEOs should not play the odds. When you are building a company, you must believe there is an answer and you cannot pay attention to your odds of finding it. You just have to find it. It matters not whether your chances are nine in ten or one in a thousand; your task is the same. — Ben Horowitz

When you found a company, you have the original vision, you make all the original decisions, you know every employee, you kind of know every aspect of the product architecture and its limitations. — Ben Horowitz

Nobody is actually a natural C.E.O. — Ben Horowitz

How will your new job differ from your current job? — Ben Horowitz

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

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

If the employees fundamentally trust the C.E.O., then communications will be vastly more efficient than if they don't. Telling things as they are is a critical part of building this trust. — Ben Horowitz

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

Leadership is hard to train on. — Ben Horowitz

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

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. — Ben Horowitz

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. — Ben Horowitz

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

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

Great CEOs build exceptional strategies for gathering the required information continuously. They embed their quest for intelligence into all of their daily actions from staff meetings to customer meetings to one-on-ones. Winning strategies are built on comprehensive knowledge gathered in every interaction the CEO has with an employee, a customer, a partner, or an investor. — Ben Horowitz

Some employees make products, some make sales; the CEO makes decisions. Therefore, a CEO can most accurately be measured by the speed and quality of those decisions. — Ben Horowitz

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. — Ben Horowitz

Most books on management are written by management consultants, and they study successful companies after they've succeeded, so they only hear winning stories. — Ben Horowitz

In a poor organization, on the other hand, people spend much of their time fighting organizational boundaries, infighting, and broken processes. They are not even clear on what their jobs are, so there is no way to know if they are getting the job done or not. In the miracle case that they work ridiculous hours and get the job done, they have no idea what it means for the company or their careers. To make it all much worse and rub salt in the wound, when they finally work up the courage to tell management how fucked-up their situation is, management denies there is a problem, then defends the status quo, then ignores the problem. — Ben Horowitz

As a company gets big, the information that informs decision-making gets massive. Depending upon the prism through which you view the business, your perspective will vary. If two people are in charge, this variance will cause conflict and delay. — Ben Horowitz

I don't believe in statistics. I believe in calculus. — Ben Horowitz

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

To succeed at selling a losing product, you must develop seriously superior sales techniques. In addition, you have to be massively competitive and incredibly hungry to survive in that environment. — Ben Horowitz

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. — Ben Horowitz

In life, everybody faces choices between doing what's popular, easy, and wrong vs. doing what's lonely, difficult, and right. 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

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

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

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. — 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

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

Some libertarians say, 'Well, if people work harder, they can make more money.' But, you know, my mother is a nurse and I am a venture capitalist. I think no matter how great a nurse she is, she wouldn't earn a one-thousandth of what I can make, if that. — Ben Horowitz

In all the difficult decisions that I made through the course of running Loudcloud and Opsware, I never once felt brave. In fact, I often felt scared to death. I never lost those feelings, but after much practice, I learned to ignore them. That learning process might also be called the courage development process. — Ben Horowitz

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 — Ben Horowitz

Most companies that go through layoffs are never the same. They don't recover because trust is broken. And if you're not honest at the point where you're breaking trust anyway, you will never recover. — Ben Horowitz

With communication technology in general, there's a kind of certain critical mass of people. Once you get to 15% of the world's entire population using one communication technology, that's a big deal. It's beyond the theoretical at this point. The people who think it's a fad have probably not been paying that much attention. — Ben Horowitz

When you look at a company that's already succeeded or is at the very top of its game, it isn't necessarily when it's executing well. It tends to be peacetime - you've defeated the competition, you have the highest margins, the highest multiple. — Ben Horowitz

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

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

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