Of all the times I think of at Loudcloud and Opsware, the Darwin Project was the most fun and the most hard. I worked seven days a week 8 a.m.–10 p.m… - Ben Horowitz

As already noted, courage is particularly important, because every decision that a CEO makes is based on incomplete information. At the time of any given decision, the CEO will generally have less than 10 percent of the information typically present in the post hoc Harvard Business School case study. As a result, the CEO must have the courage to bet the company on a direction even though she does not know if the direction is right.

In fact, looking at Data Return’s business made it crystal clear to me that Loudcloud would probably not end well. Some things are much easier to see in others than in yourself. Looking at Data Return, I could see Loudcloud’s future, and it was not pretty.

It turns out that is exactly what product strategy is all about — figuring out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job.