#392: Ben Horowitz — What You Do Is Who You Are >> Lessons from Silicon Valley, Andy Grove, Genghis Khan, Slave Revolutions, and More

Podcast Notes Key Takeaways  “To be a good CEO, and to be liked in the long run, you must do things that upset people in the short run” – Ben Horowitz“If you make decisions that everybody likes all the time, then those are the decisions they would have made without you. You’re not actually adding any value.”As an entrepreneur, avoid thinking in terms of probabilitiesInstead, think in terms of: “How do I do this?”You have to have the mindset: “Okay, I’ve got one bullet in the gun. I’ve got to hit the target. I’m going to do whatever I can to get as close as possible… If somehow we don’t make it, we don’t make it. But we’re going to die trying.”Sharpen your contradictions“In an organization, you’ll often see little disagreements between people, and a lot of your inclination is to smooth things over, but the right answer is to sharpen the contradictions” – Ben HorowitzWhat you DO is who you are – not your values, not what you tweet, but what you DOA company culture isn’t a shared set of beliefs, it’s a shared set of actions/behaviors

Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.org

"One of the key insights from Bushido is that a culture is not a set of beliefs, it's a set of actions." — Ben Horowitz

Ben Horowitz (@bhorowitz) is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is the author of The New York Times bestseller, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, and the upcoming Harper Business book, What You Do Is Who You Are, available October 29th. He also created the a16z Cultural Leadership Fund to connect cultural leaders to the best new technology companies, and enable more young African Americans to enter the technology industry.

Prior to a16z, Ben was cofounder and CEO of Opsware (formerly Loudcloud), which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007. Previously, Ben ran several product divisions at Netscape Communications, including the widely acclaimed Directory and Security product line.

Ben has an MS and BA in Computer Science from UCLA and Columbia University, respectively.

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