Ben Horowitz
Co-Founder & General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)
Co-founder of a16z, the world's largest venture capital firm with over $46B in committed capital; author of two NYT bestsellers including The Hard Thing About Hard Things; started his career as a PM and wrote the legendary 'Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager' piece.
Dimension Profile
Key Themes
Episode Summary
Ben Horowitz, co-founder of a16z and author of The Hard Thing About Hard Things, shares hard-won lessons on leadership under extreme uncertainty, including his famous framework that a leader's only real value comes from making decisions most people disagree with. He discusses the origin of his legendary 'Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager' essay, why the PM role is fundamentally about leadership without authority, and how success and failure both come from compounding series of decisions.
Leadership Principles
- → The only value you ever add as a leader is when you make a decision that most people don't like — if everybody agrees, they would have done it without you
- → The worst thing you do as a leader is hesitate on the next decision — both options are horrible but you must choose the slightly better one
- → The PM job is fundamentally a leadership job, and it's a tricky one because nobody actually reports to you
Notable Quotes
"The psychological muscle you have to build to be a great leader is to be able to click in the abyss and go, 'Okay, that way's slightly better. We're going to go that way.' If everybody agrees with the decision, then you didn't add any value because they would've done that without you. So the only value you ever add is when you make a decision that most people don't like."
— On what truly constitutes leadership value-add
"The worst thing that you do as a leader is you hesitate on the next decision. We went public with $2 million in trailing 12 months revenue at 18 months old. That's obviously a bad idea. But the alternative was going bankrupt, and that's a worse idea."
— On choosing between two terrible options as CEO of Opsware
"What I was trying to get out in Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager, was the job is fundamentally a leadership job. And it's a tricky leadership job because nobody is actually reporting to you."
— On the origin and core message of his famous PM essay
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