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

Ben Horowitz

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Ben Horowitz
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: June 13
Businessman
Businessperson
Engineer
London
England
Benjamin Abraham Horowitz
Great
Needs
Always
Ceo
Tested
Entrepreneur
Intelligence
Courage
Found

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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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You know what the difference between a vision and a hallucination is? They call it a vision when other people can see it.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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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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Leadership is hard to train on.
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The right thing to do is to thank them for their work, let people know that they're moving on, and ... you don't really have to explain all their personal details. It's more important to leave them with their dignity... and let them go on to live another day. Remember, what you say at that meeting, that's their reputation.
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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.
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The only thing that prepares you to run a company is running a company.
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A key thing in being a leader is you’ve got to pause yourself.
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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.
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The right answer on raises is you have to be formal. You have to be formal to save your own culture.
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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.
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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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Nothing motivates a great employee more than a mission that's so important that it supersedes everyone's personal ambition.
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Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand.
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