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
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.
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.
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.
In order to build a great technology company, you have to hire lots of incredibly smart people. It's a total waste to have lots of big brains but not let them work on your biggest problems.
I think there's 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.
Shareholder activism works when activists understand something about the characteristics of the business that the board doesn't.
Every employee in a company depends on the C.E.O. to make fast, high-quality decisions.
The implications of so many people connected to the Internet all the time from the standpoint of education is incredible.
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.