Horowitz: Being a CEO does not teach you how to coach one
Ben Horowitz · 20VC: a16z's Ben Horowitz on How To Create An Environment of Trust with Founders, How and Why Creating Shocking Rules Is So Impactful To Culture & What The Samurai, Shaka Senghor and Toussaint Teach Us About Company Culture Building · Oct 28, 2019 · at 27:46
Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, reflects on mistakes made when transitioning from CEO to venture capitalist and founder advisor.
0:00 / 0:05exact quote · 6.0s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Just because you've been a CEO doesn't mean you know how to teach somebody how to be a CEO.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Ben Horowitz
Professional CEOs struggle to innovate more than founders struggle to manage
“And we thought there was a reason for that because it was much harder for a professional CEO to learn to be an innovator than for an innovator to learn to be a CEO.”
Steve Ballmer's executive presence won Microsoft the early cloud battle against Google
“But, you know, in the early days of that battle, when they had way better product, Google had a way better product, Balmer would, and Balmer's still CEO at the time, would show up in companies and say, I'm here. Is Larry Page going to come visit? And of course…”
Horowitz: Consensus hiring policies for executive roles are destructive
“A lot of times you'll see rules in early stage companies where, okay, everybody's got to vote thumbs up in order for us to hire this person, or everybody's got to score them eight out of 10 or better or whatever. But with an executive, that kind of policy can …”
Horowitz: Andreessen Horowitz faced criticism for marketing VC before competitors copied it
“It was basically known as a given that you did not market Venture capital firms. Nobody had ever marketed their venture capital firm in any kind of context, and it's definitely the decision we got the most criticism for before everybody copied it”
Horowitz: Macroeconomics is a complex system that is fundamentally unanalyzable
“There's nothing more unpredictable than macroeconomics. Like, it is a very, very complex Complex system. You know, it's path dependent. It's not analyzable. You know, everybody's always making predictions, and they're always wrong until they're right, like a b…”
Okta suffered severe employee attrition early on due to improper sales strategy
“Okta went through a very difficult time early on and they had like, you know, very deep attrition. And so Todd asked me to go talk to the company about why like why people should stay in the company. Like it was that bad.”