Let’s start with the second question first. The primary thing that any technology startup must do is build a product that’s at least ten times better… - Ben Horowitz

The second thing that any technology startup must do is to take the market. If it’s possible to do something ten times better, it’s also possible that you won’t be the only company to figure that out. Therefore, you must take the market before somebody else does. Very few products are ten times better than the competition’s, so unseating the new incumbent is much more difficult than unseating the old one.

The second thing that any technology startup must do is to take the market.

The primary thing that any technology startup must do is build a product that’s at least ten 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.

I’d learned the hard way that when hiring executives, one should follow Colin Powell’s instructions and hire for strength rather than lack of weakness. By running sales, I understood very clearly the strengths we needed. I made a careful list and set out to find the sales executives with the right skills and talents for Opsware.

Making it good at scale means admitting that it must be different and embracing the changes that you’ll need to make to keep things from falling apart.

While executives don’t age nearly as fast as athletes do, companies, markets, and technologies change a thousand times faster than the game of football.