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
What do you get when you cross a herd of sheep with a herd of lemmings? A herd of venture capitalists.
Relationships built from a business do better than the reverse.
Mark [Andressen] was more popular than me at the time ... He was like Beyoncé, I was Kelly Rowlings
A CEO needs great intelligence and great courage. And I always found my courage was tested more.
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.
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.
In a company, hundreds of decisions get made, but objectives and goals are thin.
The bigger you get, the harder this gets because the more aggressive the people working for you are.
Your employees know each other better than they know you.
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.
Volatility and length, that's the value on an option. 10 years on a startup stock, that's a big valuable thing.
There is no silver bullet. There are always options and the options have consequences.
The most important thing you can learn as CEO- one of the hardest things to do is, you have to discipline yourself to see your company... through the eyes of the people that you're working through. Through the eyes of the employees, through the eyes of your partners... through the eyes of the people who you're not talking to and who are not in the room.
Generally the reason they fail in the job is, you made some mistake in the hiring process in that you didn't match... them to the needs of your company accurately enough. That's the #1 reason this fails. And that's generally a good place to start: Here's where we are and here's what I didn't recognize about us and about you when I made the decision, and now it is what it is.