Quote

Over the last ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.

Ben Horowitz

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ben Horowitz
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: June 13
Businessman
Businessperson
Engineer
London
England
Benjamin Abraham Horowitz
Great
Remains
Lowered
Years
Courage
Dramatically
Building
Advances
Company
Technological
High
Bars
Lasts
Ten
Last
Financial
Ever
Starting

More quotes by Ben Horowitz

Image
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
Image
Breakthrough ideas usually come from guys who look like they're hallucinating
Ben Horowitz
Image
Volatility and length, that's the value on an option. 10 years on a startup stock, that's a big valuable thing.
Ben Horowitz
Image
Until you make the effort to get to know someone or something, you don’t know anything.
Ben Horowitz
Image
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
Image
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.
Ben Horowitz
Image
The right answer on raises is you have to be formal. You have to be formal to save your own culture.
Ben Horowitz
Image
There is no silver bullet. There are always options and the options have consequences.
Ben Horowitz
Image
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
Image
The key to high-quality communication is trust, and its hard to trust somebody that you dont know.
Ben Horowitz
Image
Your employees know each other better than they know you.
Ben Horowitz
Image
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.
Ben Horowitz
Image
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
Image
The only thing that prepares you to run a company is running a company.
Ben Horowitz
Image
A CEO needs great intelligence and great courage. And I always found my courage was tested more.
Ben Horowitz
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Nothing motivates a great employee more than a mission that's so important that it supersedes everyone's personal ambition.
Ben Horowitz
Image
A key thing in being a leader is you’ve got to pause yourself.
Ben Horowitz
Image
I don’t believe in statistics. I believe in calculus.
Ben Horowitz