Ben Horowitz Quotations

If you have never done the job, how do you know what to want?

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

Don't punk out and don't quit.

How do you make your company a good place to work in general? That's a really, really, really large and complex set of skills. A lot of it is on-the-job training, combined with excellent mentorship.

A key thing in being a leader is you’ve got to pause yourself.

For example, the vast majority of security break-ins occur as a result of problems with known fixes. With an automated system, you can keep up to date.

The trouble with innovation is that truly innovative ideas often look like bad ideas at the time.

A manager can't act like a role model. They need to BE a role model.

To succeed at selling a losing product, you must develop seriously superior sales techniques. In addition, you have to be massively competitive and incredibly hungry to survive in that environment.

In life, you don't have a level of confrontation and the nonsense you run into when you're a CEO. CEOs aren't born.