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
“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
“What would you do if capital were free?” is a dangerous question to ask an entrepreneur. It’s kind of like asking a… — 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
“This is not checkers; this is motherfuckin’ chess. Technology businesses tend to be extremely complex. The underlying technology moves, the competition moves,… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
“Want to see a great company story? Read Jeff Bezos’s three-page letter he wrote to shareholders in 1997. In telling Amazon’s story in… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
“how Loudcloud was born. Interestingly, the most lasting remnant of Loudcloud is the name itself, as the word cloud hadn’t been previously… — 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
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
“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
“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
Shareholder activism works when activists understand something about the characteristics of the business that the board doesn't. — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
“Startup CEOs should not play the odds. When you are building a company, you must believe there is an answer and you… — 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
One of the great things about building a tech company is the amazing people that you can hire. — 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
The bad thing about young people starting a company is that sometimes they do it for the wrong reasons or because they… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
“Remember that this is what separates the women from the girls. If you want to be great, this is the challenge. If… — Ben Horowitz Copy Share Image
I described the CEO job as knowing what to do and getting the company to do what you want. Designing a proper… — 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
“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
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
Over the last ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar… — 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
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
