The only thing that prepares you to run a company is running a company. Ben Horowitz More Quotes by Ben Horowitz More Quotes From Ben Horowitz 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 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 decision practice running 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 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
