Ben Horowitz

Every employee in a company depends on the C.E.O. to make fast, high-quality decisions. ”

I think when companies are struggling, they don't want to talk to the press. The guys who write business books aren't interested in it because nobody wants to learn what it's like to be a mess, you want to learn how to be successful. That's slanted the whole thing quite a bit. ”

I think that business book reporting, it's all Jim Collins, it's the story of victory; it's success bias over and over again. ”

In a company, hundreds of decisions get made, but objectives and goals are thin. ”

Groupon looked like a very high valuation, but any investment in a great company at any stage is almost always a good investment. ”

I was an executive running a pretty substantial group before becoming CEO, and I had no idea what it was like. When something goes wrong, people say, 'It's all your fault.' Your reaction is, 'It's not my fault.' But what do you mean? I was the founder, I hired everybody in the company, I was managing it. ”

As companies move to web-based computing they get a lot more servers, which are difficult to manage and control. All kinds of problems can arise - security, quality and worms. ”

In Silicon Valley, when you're a private company, the entrepreneur can do no wrong. ”

You can't worry about the mistakes, because you're going to make a lot of them. You've got to be thinking about your next move. ”

If the employees fundamentally trust the C.E.O., then communications will be vastly more efficient than if they don't. Telling things as they are is a critical part of building this trust. ”