Ben Horowitz Manage Quotations

The bigger you get, the harder this gets because the more aggressive the people working for you are.

Your employees know each other better than they know you.

The person they're working with, is going to be the person they'll know more. So if that person leaves, they're going to go - well, should have I left too? What did they get and how does that compare to my deal.

Volatility and length, that's the value on an option. 10 years on a startup stock, that's a big valuable thing.

You can take somebody's job, you have to take their job, but you don't have to take their dignity.

The right answer on raises is you have to be formal. You have to be formal to save your own culture.

It's hard in daily life. It's even harder in management because it's the stress of the moment.

The one thing with stress is, you've got to keep your focus on what you can do, not what happened to you.

By far the most difficult skill I learned as a C.E.O. was the ability to manage my own psychology. Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared with keeping my mind in check.

In my own experience as a C.E.O., I would find myself laying awake at 3 A.M. asking questions about my business, and there weren't management books out there that could help me.