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.

Ben Horowitz

Categorized in : Running Practice Decision

As a startup CEO, I slept like a baby. I woke up every 2 hours and cried.

Ben Horowitz

hours motivation baby

You know what the difference between a vision and a hallucination is? They call it a vision when other people can see it.

Ben Horowitz

vision differences people

The one thing with stress is, you've got to keep your focus on what you can do, not what happened to you.

Ben Horowitz

stress focus management

In my experience as CEO, I found that the most important decisions tested my courage far more than my intelligence.

Ben Horowitz

important decision found

You don't need every investor to believe that you can succeed. You only need one.

Ben Horowitz

inspiration believe needs

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.

Ben Horowitz

stories mind remember

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

inspiration jobs people

Hire sales people who are really smart problem solvers, but lack courage, hunger and competitiveness, and your company will go out of business.

Ben Horowitz

smart problem people

The primary thing that any technology startup must do is build a product that's at least 10 times better at doing something than the current prevailing way of doing that thing. Two or three times better will not be good enough to get people to switch to the new thing fast enough or in large enough volume to matter.

Ben Horowitz

technology two people

Startup CEOs should not play the odds. When you are building a company, you must believe there is an answer and you cannot pay attention to your odds of finding it. You just have to find it. It matters not whether your chances are nine in ten or one in a thousand; your task is the same.

Ben Horowitz

odds play believe

There are no shortcuts to knowledge, especially knowledge gained from personal experience. Following conventional wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all.

Ben Horowitz

knowledge-gained knowing-nothing shortcuts

Billionaires prefer Black women. They are loyal and guard your interests. Black wives are for grown ups.

Ben Horowitz

loyal black wife

You're better off being The Beatles than The Monkees, as a startup.

Ben Horowitz

better-off

When you're making a critical decision, you have to understand how it's going to be interpreted from all points of view. Not just your point of view, not just the person you're talking to, but the people that aren't in the room. Everybody else.

Ben Horowitz

critical-decisions views talking

One of the great things about building a tech company is the amazing people that you can hire.

Ben Horowitz

great-things building people

There are no silver bullets.

Ben Horowitz

silver-bullets bullets growth

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.

Ben Horowitz

phones important people

The only thing that prepares you to run a company is running a company.

Ben Horowitz

company running

Breakthrough ideas usually come from guys who look like they're hallucinating

Ben Horowitz

guy looks ideas

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.

Ben Horowitz

quality kind moving