Ben Horowitz quotes

Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous, and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly. If you are CEO, these choices will lead to a courageous or cowardly company. (Ben Horowitz)
The important thing about mobile is, everybody has a computer in their pocket. The implications of so many people connected to the Internet all the time from the standpoint of education is incredible. View quote
Ben Horowitz
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. View quote
Ben Horowitz
I emphasize to C.E.O.s, you have to have a story in the minds of the employees. It's hard to memorize objectives, but it's easy to remember a story. View quote
Ben Horowitz
By far the most difficult skill I learned as a C. E. O. was the ability to manage my own psychology. Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared with keeping my mind in check. View quote
Ben Horowitz
It helps to have founded and run a company if you're going to help somebody run a company who is a founder. View quote
Ben Horowitz
Note to self: It's a good idea to ask, 'What am I not doing?' View quote
Ben Horowitz
In my experience as CEO, I found that the most important decisions tested my courage far more than my intelligence. View quote
Ben Horowitz
Hire sales people who are really smart problem solvers, but lack courage, hunger and competitiveness, and your company will go out of business. View quote
Ben Horowitz
The key to high-quality communication is trust, and its hard to trust somebody that you dont know. View quote
Ben Horowitz
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. (Ben Horowitz)
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. View quote
Ben Horowitz
As a company grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge. View quote
Ben Horowitz
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. View quote
Ben Horowitz
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. View quote
Ben Horowitz
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. View quote
Ben Horowitz
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. View quote
Ben Horowitz
Business ends up being very dynamic and situational. View quote
Ben Horowitz
Leadership is hard to train on. View quote
Ben Horowitz
The thing that's confusing for investors is that founders don't know how to be CEO. I didn't know how to do the job when I was a CEO. Founder CEOs don't know how to be CEOs, but it doesn't mean they can't learn. The question is... can the founder learn that job and can they tolerate all mistakes they will make doing it? View quote
Ben Horowitz
Groupon looked like a very high valuation, but any investment in a great company at any stage is almost always a good investment. (Ben Horowitz)
In a company, hundreds of decisions get made, but objectives and goals are thin. View quote
Ben Horowitz
I described the CEO job as knowing what to do and getting the company to do what you want. Designing a proper company culture will help you get your company to do what you want in certain important areas for a very long time. View quote
Ben Horowitz
One person is never as stupid as a group of people. That's why they have lynch mobs, not lynch individuals. View quote
Ben Horowitz
Following conventional wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all. View quote
Ben Horowitz