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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

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Ben Horowitz
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: June 13
Businessman
Businessperson
Engineer
London
England
Benjamin Abraham Horowitz
Enjoy
Work
Good
Think
Thinking
Contrived
People
Theres
Enjoying
Mankind

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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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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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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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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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I don’t believe in statistics. I believe in calculus.
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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.
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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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Leadership is hard to train on.
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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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There is no silver bullet. There are always options and the options have consequences.
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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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Your employees know each other better than they know you.
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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.
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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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Billionaires prefer Black women. They are loyal and guard your interests. Black wives are for grown ups.
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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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Breakthrough ideas usually come from guys who look like they're hallucinating
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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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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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