Ben Horowitz Quotes & Sayings (Page 3)

“I would have never wanted to write another management book. There are so many of them, and everybody says the same thing about them, and they are all the same - they give the exact same advice. It's like a diet book; they all say eat less calories, exercise more, and every single book has the same conclusion.”

“John D. Rockefeller said that he found friendships based on business to be far more long lasting and profitable than the reverse. I think there's something to that. A company can end up being very Confucian, where the good of the individual is subjugated to the good of the whole.”

“You read these management books that say, 'These are the hard things about running a company.' But those aren't really the hard things. The hard things are when you have to layoff half your company, or you have to fire your best friend. Or you have to figure out a way not to go bankrupt.”

“With communication technology in general, there's a kind of certain critical mass of people. Once you get to 15% of the world's entire population using one communication technology, that's a big deal. It's beyond the theoretical at this point. The people who think it's a fad have probably not been paying that much attention.”

“I'm a huge believer in clarity.”

“In my experience as CEO, I found that the most important decisions tested my courage far more than my intelligence.”

“Every employee in a company depends on the C.E.O. to make fast, high-quality decisions.”

“One person is never as stupid as a group of people. That's why they have lynch mobs, not lynch individuals.”

“One of the things I say to people is: Imagine if we succeeded.”

“Shareholder activism works when activists understand something about the characteristics of the business that the board doesn't.”