Ben Horowitz
Ben Horowitz
Ben Horowitzis an American businessman, investor, blogger, and author. He is a high technology entrepreneur and co-founder and general partner along with Marc Andreessen of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He co-founded and served as president and chief executive officer of the enterprise software company Opsware, which Hewlett-Packard acquired for $1.6 billion in cash in July 2007. Horowitz is the author of The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers. In the...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth13 June 1966
Every employee in a company depends on the C.E.O. to make fast, high-quality decisions.
Do you have a real interest in people who work for you? Most good leaders have that - it's hard to get someone to follow you if they feel like you hate 'em.
The implications of so many people connected to the Internet all the time from the standpoint of education is incredible.
Most of my job and most of what I do is to mentor people. There are a lot of people I work with that I don't have investments in.
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.
If I have one skill as a manager, I can make things extremely clear.
I think that business book reporting, it's all Jim Collins, it's the story of victory; it's success bias over and over again.
Good shareholder activists have incredible interest in the company because they own a lot of it.
Most books on management are written by management consultants, and they study successful companies after they've succeeded, so they only hear winning stories.
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.
When the value of the company clearly has fallen below what its assets are worth, having a shareholder who says, 'Let's get a better board' can be helpful.
When I was a CEO, the books on management that I read weren't very much help after the first few months on the job. They were all designed to give you directions on how not to screw up your company.
The hardest thing about starting a company and running a company is, there's just so many expectations on you, and there are so many people who have things that they want you to do. It's a lot like life about that.
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.