Ben Horowitz Quotes

I’d learned that all decisions were objective until the first line of code was written. After that, all decisions were emotional.

Why did so few startup advisers and venture capitalists have any experience starting companies? As these thoughts rolled around in my head, I sent Marc Andreessen an instant message: “We ought to start a venture capital firm. Our motto for general partners would be ‘some experience required’ as in some experience in founding and running companies is required to advise people who are founding and running companies.” To my surprise, he replied, “I was thinking the same thing.

DOGS AT WORK AND YOGA AREN’T CULTURE Startups

nine in ten or one in a thousand; your task is the same.

If we lost a big prospect, the whole organization needed to understand why, so that we could together fix the things that were broken in our products, marketing, and sales process.

the technology business, you rarely know everything up front. The difference between being mediocre and magical is often the difference between letting people take creative risk and holding them too tightly accountable. Accountability is important, but it’s not the only thing that’s important.

When you expect your employees to act like adults, they generally do. If you treat them like children, then get ready for your company to turn into one big Barney episode.

The customer only knows what she thinks she wants based on her experience with the current product. The innovator can take into account everything that’s possible, but often must go against what she knows to be true. As a result, innovation requires a combination of knowledge, skill, and courage. Sometimes only the founder has the courage to ignore the data;

If we could improve in any way, how would we do it?  What’s the number-one problem with our organization? Why?  What’s not fun about working here?  Who is really kicking ass in the company? Whom do you admire?  If you were me, what changes would you make?  What don’t you like about the product?  What’s the biggest opportunity that we’re missing out on?  What are we not doing that we should be doing?  Are you happy working here?

During this time I learned the most important rule of raising money privately: Look for a market of one. You only need one investor to say yes, so it’s best to ignore the other thirty who say “no.” We eventually found investors for a series C round (meaning our third round of funding) at an amazing $700 million pre-money valuation and raised $120 million.

Often Two executives act as Ones for their functions, but Twos as members of the executive team. For example, the head of sales might easily make all the decisions that are local to the sales organization but prefer to take direction with respect to the overall company plans. This is the best kind of multilayer leadership possible, because directions are clear and decisions are made rapidly with precision.

In the long term, however, Netscape inflicted irreparable damage on Microsoft’s stronghold on the computing industry: our work moved developers from Win32 API, Microsoft’s proprietary platform, to the Internet. Someone writing new functionality for computers no longer wrote for Microsoft’s proprietary platform. Instead, they wrote to the Internet and World Wide Web’s standard interfaces. Once Microsoft lost its grip on developers, it became only a matter of time before it lost its monopoly on operating systems. Along the way, Netscape invented many of the foundational technologies of the modern Internet, including JavaScript, SSL, and cookies.

It amazed me how a diverse perspective utterly changed the meaning of every significant event in the world.

"Bill Campbell: "It's not about the money."
Ben Horowitz: "What's it about, Bill?"
Bill: "It's about the FUCKING money.

At a macro level, everybody views the world through her own personal prism. When interviewing candidates, it’s helpful to watch for small distinctions that indicate whether they view the world through the “me” prism or the “team” prism.