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

Ben Horowitz

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Ben Horowitz
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: June 13
Businessman
Businessperson
Engineer
London
England
Benjamin Abraham Horowitz
Needs
Clarity
Solution
Solutions
Organization
Doesn
Need
Sometimes

More quotes by Ben Horowitz

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Volatility and length, that's the value on an option. 10 years on a startup stock, that's a big valuable thing.
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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.
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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.
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Here's Kanye, the great musical genius of his generation in hip hop, but, like, society really can't even deal with him because he's always saying something that people go, 'Oh, I can't believe Kanye said that. I can't believe he did that.'
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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.
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The primary thing that any technology startup must do is build a product that's at least 10 times better at doing something than the current prevailing way of doing that thing. Two or three times better will not be good enough to get people to switch to the new thing fast enough or in large enough volume to matter.
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For example, the vast majority of security break-ins occur as a result of problems with known fixes. With an automated system, you can keep up to date.
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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
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Relationships built from a business do better than the reverse.
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Nothing motivates a great employee more than a mission that's so important that it supersedes everyone's personal ambition.
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It's pretty clear that [customers] know what their budgets are now, and what they want to spend it on.
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Hire sales people who are really smart problem solvers, but lack courage, hunger and competitiveness, and your company will go out of business.
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Your employees know each other better than they know you.
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If you manage a team of 10 people, its quite possible to do so with very few mistakes or bad behaviors. If you manage an organization of 1,000 people it is quite impossible. At a certain size, your company will do things that are so bad that you never imagined that youd be associated with that kind of incompetence.
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Mark [Andressen] was more popular than me at the time ... He was like Beyoncé, I was Kelly Rowlings
Ben Horowitz
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Groupon looked like a very high valuation, but any investment in a great company at any stage is almost always a good investment.
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There is no silver bullet. There are always options and the options have consequences.
Ben Horowitz
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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.
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How do you make your company a good place to work in general? That's a really really really large and complex set of skills. A lot of it is on the job training, combined with excellent mentorship.
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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