$46B of hard truths from Ben Horowitz: Why founders fail and why you need to run toward fear (a16z co-founder)

The worst thing that you do as a leader is you hesitate on the next decision. The thing that causes you to hesitate is both Decisions are Habit. Probably one of my bigger ones on that was we went public with two million dollars in trailing twelve months revenue at eighteen months old. That's obviously a bad idea. But the truth of it was the alternative was going bankrupt. And that's the worst site. It's very difficult and painful to be a CO, to be a founder. In spite of that, so many people want to start companies the psychological muscle you have to build to be a great leader is to be able to look in the abyss and go, Okay, that way's slightly better. We're gonna go that way.

If everybody agrees with the decision, then you didn't add any value, because they would have done that without you. So the only value you ever add is when you make a decision that most people don't like. You are famous for writing one of the most popular pieces of literature for product managers. What I was trying to get out in good product manager, bad product manager, was the job is Fundamentally Leadership job, and it's a tricky leadership job because Nobody is actually reporting to you. There's always this kind of sense that the PM is not the mini CO. How dare you call yourself that. I actually think that's exactly what the PM is. It doesn't matter if you write a good spec or you have a good interview or you do this or do that. What matters is that the product works.

Today my guest is Ben Horowitz. Ben is the Z in A sixteen Z, the world's largest venture capital firm with over forty six billion dollars in committed capital. They're investors in open AI, Cursor, Andrew, Databricks, Figma. Basically every generational tech company He's also the author of two New York Times bestselling books. The Hard Thing About Hard Things and What You Do Is Who You Are. Ben is endlessly fascinating. He started a rap group when he was younger. He started his career as a product manager and wrote the now famous Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager piece. In our wide ranging conversation, we cover a ton of ground, and Ben shares stories and insights that he's never sharing else.

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