“If our company isn’t good enough to win, then do we need to exist at all?” — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
In Silicon Valley, when you're a private company, the entrepreneur can do no wrong. — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
The only thing that prepares you to run a company is running a company. — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
In a company, hundreds of decisions get made, but objectives and goals are thin. — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
One of the great things about building a tech company is the amazing people that you can hire. — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
Groupon looked like a very high valuation, but any investment in a great company at any stage is almost always a good… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
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. — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
“If you run a company, you will experience overwhelming psychological pressure to be overly positive. Stand up to the pressure, face your… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
Big companies have trouble with innovation. Innovation is about bad ideas, or ideas that look like bad ideas. That's the fundamental thing. — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
It helps to have founded and run a company if you're going to help somebody run a company who is a founder. — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
Good shareholder activists have incredible interest in the company because they own a lot of it. — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
“Spend zero time on what you could have done, and devote all of your time on what you might do. Because in… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
In my own experience as a C.E.O., I would find myself laying awake at 3 A.M. asking questions about my business, and… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
John D. Rockefeller said that he found friendships based on business to be far more long lasting and profitable than the reverse.… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
I do think a lot of people are trying to do important things still, and I think it is really a great… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
As a company gets big, the information that informs decision-making gets massive. Depending upon the prism through which you view the business,… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
The hardest thing about starting a company and running a company is, there's just so many expectations on you, and there are… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
If I'm in my position at a company, I may not have the knowledge of the C.E.O., I may not know what's… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
How do you make your company a good place to work in general? That's a really, really, really large and complex set… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
The laws of business physics have been broken in terms of how many customers you can acquire and how fast. No one… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
“When founders come in to pitch our firm—one as the CEO and the other as president—the conversation often goes like this: “Who… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
“Me: “Why does competitor X have five times your revenue?” Entrepreneur: “We are using partners and OEMs, because we can’t build a… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
“Most business relationships either become too tense to tolerate or not tense enough to be productive after a while. Either people challenge… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
Generally the reason they fail in the job is, you made some mistake in the hiring process in that you didn't match...… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
“We would have won, but the other guys gave the deal away.” “The customer selected us technically and thinks we are the… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
The most important thing you can learn as CEO- one of the hardest things to do is, you have to discipline yourself… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
“The most important thing to understand is that the job of a big company executive is very different from the job of… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
“If you investigate companies that have failed, you will find that many employees knew about the fatal issues long before those issues… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
When the value of the company clearly has fallen below what its assets are worth, having a shareholder who says, 'Let's get… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
Shareholder activism works when activists understand something about the characteristics of the business that the board doesn't. — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
The big value of the founder running the company is really two things: the knowledge and the commitment. — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
Every employee in a company depends on the C.E.O. to make fast, high-quality decisions. — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
“The purpose of process is communication. If there are five people in your company, you don’t need process, because you can just… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
Hire sales people who are really smart problem solvers, but lack courage, hunger and competitiveness, and your company will go out of… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
In order to build a great technology company, you have to hire lots of incredibly smart people. It's a total waste to… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
There is no silver bullet. There are always options and the options have consequences. — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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,… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
“The hard thing is when those “great people” develop a sense of entitlement and start demanding unreasonable things. The hard thing isn’t setting up… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
“As painful as it might be, I knew that we had to get into the broader market in order to understand it well enough… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
“On my grandfather’s tombstone, you will find his favorite Marx quote: “Life is struggle.” I believe that within that quote lies the most important… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
“Bill Campbell: "It's not about the money." Ben Horowitz: "What's it about, Bill?" Bill: "It's about the FUCKING money.” — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
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… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
One person is never as stupid as a group of people. That's why they have lynch mobs, not lynch individuals. — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
“out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job.” — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
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… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
Breakthrough ideas usually come from guys who look like they're hallucinating — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
