Ben Horowitz
American entrepreneur and venture capitalist; co-founder and CEO of Loudcloud/Opsware, co-founder of the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) in 2009, and author of The Hard Thing About Hard Things (2014).
Everything they publish, on ppll ↗
Ben Horowitz did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
The line under a date shows how recently it was said: empty within a month, full after three years.
-
Our reading
The struggle of running a company is not failure, but it causes failure, always if you are weak
Their wordsThe Struggle is not failure, but it causes failure. Especially if you are weak. Always if you are weak.
-
Our reading
Their wordsThe Struggle is where greatness comes from.
-
Their wordsEverybody makes mistakes. Every CEO makes thousands of mistakes. Evaluating yourself and giving yourself an “F” doesn’t help.
- 7 months earlier
-
Their wordsThere may be nothing scarier in business than facing an existential threat. So scary that many in the organization will do anything to avoid it.
-
Their wordsThere comes a time in every company’s life where it must fight for its life. If you find yourself running when you should be fighting, you need to ask yourself: “If our company isn’t good enough to win, then do we need to exist at all?”
- 7 months earlier
-
Their wordsMy greatest management discovery through that transition was that peacetime and wartime require radically different management styles.
↗Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO (a16z)a16z.com 1st of 3 in this piece
-
Their wordsI believe that the answer is yes, but it’s hard. Mastering both wartime and peacetime skill sets means understanding the many rules of management and knowing when to follow them and when to violate them.
↗Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO (a16z)a16z.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
-
Their wordsBe aware that management books tend to be written by management consultants who study successful companies during their times of peace. As a result, the resulting books describe the methods of peacetime CEOs.
↗Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO (a16z)a16z.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
The line under a date fills as the words age, a quarter at a time: past a month, six months, a year, and three years. Empty means said within the last month; full, more than three years ago. It says when, not whether it still holds — a change of mind is marked on the claim itself.
Dashed means we only know the words existed by that date; they may be older.