Ben Horowitz

Ben explains that having everyone eat lunch together builds rapport, relationships, and trust, a simple practice teams undervalue in remote-work settings.

Ben’s guiding motto from his father is that life is not fair, and dropping expectations of fairness lets you focus on what to do next instead of feeling defeated.

Six PhDs sought $200k, Ben offered $10m so they could outpace Hadoop and build a full company, showing importance of thinking big.

Founders must simultaneously build confidence and competence or risk hesitation, politics, and eventual replacement.

Refusing to hire experienced talent is equally harmful; founders must bring in experts when specialised knowledge accelerates the company.

Ben learned from a pilot that both crashes and successes result from chains of small choices, so break sunk-cost thinking and focus on each next good decision.

Horowitz guided a CEO to frame feedback around cross-functional effectiveness, enabling correction of a disruptive CTO without firing him.

Ben argues a market only bubbles when almost everyone believes it is not a bubble, since capitulation drives prices out of control.

New CEO Ali tried coaching low performers until Ben’s leverage advice led him to replace them, strengthening Databricks’ leadership team.

a16z ignored controversy, focused on Neumann’s proven brand-building skill and expects the bet to be a top return.

Ben says only an irrational, purpose-driven urge—not money—sustains founders through inevitable hardships.

Ben emphasises enterprise AI must embed fine-grained access control and each company’s unique entity definitions, so generic foundation models are insufficient.

If you repeatedly yell at a team, it signals you have not clearly explained what you want, so document expectations instead of venting frustration.