Ben Horowitz

@andrewchen At this point in my life, I would probably refer to them as friends rather than mentors. Bill Campbell and Andy Grove are probably the two that I have learned the most from. Andy's whole life is a great lesson in how I should live mine. The way that Bill listens to people is so advanced that I learn something every time I'm with him. There are other people on other fields. Like Nas. Nas has the ability to see the world in such a radically different perspective. We can listen to the same song and he'll hear 30 things that I didn't.

@bhorowitz Any tips on becoming a better listener?

@ryanallen_com Keep at it .... you're doing a great job :)

@ryanallen_com listen for more music. I.e. rap or hip hop :)

@8artd interesting to see the combo Kanye + Ben :-)

@eriktorenberg I probably would have put in more war stories. I didn't know if people would like those, but they definitely did. The biggest surprise about the book's reception is that I wrote it for a very narrow audience, but everyone from teachers to pastors seems to like it. That's been shocking.

Ben, what you mentioned about Nas hearing 30 things that you didn't when listening to the same song is one of the realest metaphors for why diversity is such an important issue. How do we do a better job of helping founders, VC's, LP's, and others see this as a competitive advantage?

@bhorowitz I would LOVE more war stories!

@bhorowitz @eriktorenberg Hi Ben, i have made one amazing product but don't know how to get it published by moderators on Product Hunt? Can you help me out ?

@brianlshultz I'm not sure if Universities adapting are the most interesting thing. I think that the greatest teaching professors making their courses available world wide for free/cheap will be the big breakthrough. Universities do a great job educating the elite/lucky today and I think they will continue to do that very well. It's hard for me to imagine them getting into the high volume business.

@brianlshultz Hey Brian - fellow Columbia alum here. Great question :)

@bhorowitz @brianlshultz University studies are mostly outdated today. We live in the fast moving world, books and modules can't keep with the new data everyday. From my point of view, studies will move to online resources where everyone will be able to choose what to learn and where to get most reliable information from

@shaunmodi Hip Hop is really just the soundtrack in my head. It's hard to explain why. The great hip hop artists are the top poets of this generation and I have always been a poetry fan. ee cummings is my guy!

@shaunmodi You should read the backstory to Ben's love of hip hop: http://www.bhorowitz.com/the_leg.... #tictoc

@garcegarce love that! Thanks for sharing!

@focus_on_risk it's one of my favorites!

@zfiscr If you're an enterprise company, then the best way to do it is probably salesforce math. I.e. add up the quota of the productive people that you have. If you are a consumer company, financials are usually a derivative of some other metric. I'd just be explicit about how you get there.

@bhorowitz If the direct sale of advertising (non-programatic) is your main source of revenue, would it qualify as enterprise since you have to rely on a sales force to bring in the numbers?

@sydney_liu_sl Nobody who ever built a great company wasn't ridiculed along the way. If you are driven by social signals, you shouldn't be an entrepreneur. That's not say that you shouldn't ever listen to input, but you have to decide for yourself.

@sydney_liu_sl You're always asking great questions, Sydney. Thanks.

@paulrobertcary Thanks Paul :)

@emivelazquez6 I hope so. My partner Balaji has a very interesting theory that God was the original leviathan then the state and in the future the network. At a very basic level, people behaved themselves originally because they feared God then later the rise of uniformed police and the state and eventually their reputations on the Network. If he's right, we are in for a lot of changes :-).

@bhorowitz Great answer. Balaji has some amazing ideas, and love what they're doing with 21inc. Thanks for the reply!

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@danprisk you can read "The magic Kingdom" by Cory Doctorow, where reputation translates to money if you want to kick it up a notch ;)

@bhorowitz brb, making subscription-based "Heavens" for networks. Pay more if you have a bad reputation and still want to enjoy access to the nicest VR rooms.

@troyshu The big thing is to focus all of your energy on product/market fit. I.e., get to a product that people are adopting very quickly or that you can reliably sell repeatedly. To some extent, everything else culture, management, etc is secondary. Don't take your eyes off the prize.

@bhorowitz This quote should be an opening statement to...I pledge of allegiance to my vision that I will "focus all of my energy on product/market fit, and get to a product that people are adopting very quickly or that I can reliably sell repeatedly". We all witness that most founders spend far to much effort being distracted by startup events, fundraising, networking, team brainstorming, corp formation, IP protection, legal, admin functions, and the myriad of other distractions instead of the singular focus of customer development to ensure PMF.

@kamilszybalski I do know that one of @bhorowitz's favorite books on leadership is The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution

@garcegarce Thanks for that. Ben, we have 13 people now who are curious about your shelf.

@kamilszybalski here's what Marc Andreessen is reading -

@mitali I think that early stage investing, if done right, is pretty disconnected from the public markets. The average Venture Capital exit is over 8 years, so the public markets will change a lot by then. Having said that, a lot of hobbyist investors will stop if the markets crash and that will make it more difficult to raise money for sure. In addition, if you are a VC and you pay a bubble price even at an early stage that can be hard to recover from (for both you and the company) if the climate changes radically. .

@mitali I don't know if I miss much, but there are definitely times when I can see what needs to be done extremely clearly and I am working with a less experienced CEO and I get carried away. I need to control myself in those situations.

@bhorowitz What do you mean by "carried away"? To what extent?

@benhcenter Start a company or join a start up and learn what the process of building a company feels like. It's almost impossible to learn any other way.

@bhorowitz Whats AH's perspective of taking on a failed entrepreneur as a VC?

@bhorowitz Thanks so much!

@elilaipson +1000 on this question. Just read this chapter and am wondering what was in that bible! @bhorowitz, give us some insights please!

@alexstanton17 Liquid Swords or Illmatic. hard to choose.

@alexstanton17 Ready to Die

@blakemcdowall I'll take the Purple Tape over Liquid Swords any day.

@chrstphr_ @focus_on_risk @blakemcdowall I know this will be met with some disagreement, but I grew up through the 90s and 2000s for rap, so mine is Get Rich Or Die Trying, followed closely by College Dropout and The Eminem Show.

@alexstanton17 Get Rich or Die Trying was a classic in its own right. My personal fav is 'It Was Written'. Nas showcased true professional skills on that one.

@fornaio It may be the most important computer science breakthrough since packet switching. We are in the very early days though. TCP/IP was invented in 1973 (I think) and it took 20 years to get to the beginning of what we consider the Internet today. Bitcoin is still a baby by that measure.

@bhorowitz really put it into perspective...

@_camara_ Thank you!

@chrstphr_ IMO it totally depends on the company and the MAU type. What kind of engagement are you getting? For me it's value creation vs value capture. Where are you creating value for your users and where are you capturing the value they create in return?

@kristineberth : +10 from my side!

@kristineberth Data - though I would consider it the primary skill of a marketeer. Even the slightest misread of data can be fatal to a startup. Don't make the data fit your assumptions.

@emteajay I think that I would be a bio hacker. Computational biology is the most exciting thing that I've ever seen. I'd love to work in that field.

@blakemcdowall I wrote a post on that called Why Product Founders Fail or something like that. I don't think that you step away from the product, but as soon as you get in market, you have to start paying a lot of attention to the rest of the company.

@blakemcdowall Why Founders Fail: The Product CEO Paradox - http://www.bhorowitz.com/why_fou...

thanks @bhorowitz ! I found it in case anyone else is curious: http://www.bhorowitz.com/why_fou...

@garcegarce great timing ;) thanks!

@benmoore82 Good question. Kristo is an awesome guy - I meet him when TW was just starting to grow. UK startup scene is on the rise thanks to SEIS. Gotta love it.

@txredking

@malopatrick Thanks!

@jkarmy Having been CEO in 2001, I don't think that we're anywhere near where we were then. Valuations have gotten high in certain tech sectors in the private markets only, but they have actually corrected themselves pretty quickly. For example, enterprise software started to get over valued privately, but after several companies went public at lower valuations than their last private rounds, the private markets corrected as well. I don't see a massive crash on the horizon like 2001. In 2001, Nasdaq lost 80% of its value. I'll bet any bubble believer everything that I have that Nasdaq won't drop 80% in the next 5 years.

@bhorowitz Would you make the same bet on a 30% or 40% drop?

@ems_hodge My hobbies are hip hop, BBQ, and macro economics. @pmarca is better than me at macro economics, but I can destroy him in BBQ and hip hop.

@m_wagenhaus http://fortune.com/2014/02/27/be...

@m_wagenhaus Illmatic, Paid in Full, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

@bhorowitz My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is also in my top 5 albums (of any genre!) Its Kanye's absolute best and was an inflection point for hip hop like there was before and after

@bhorowitz where's "The Infamous!"

@sawhney_rohit I think that's specific to the company, the product, and the people. Be careful about generic org design. It all needs to be custom. You wouldn't organize AirBnB the way you organize Workday. That would be insane.

@dorondavid1 Slack

@dorondavid1 because files are commodity. the network's the thing

@mitali then where do you create? edit? see changes?

@dorondavid1 on any of those tools you mentioned. commodity doesn't mean a thing you don't need, it means a thing that does not have much value beyond its utility like salt or oil. you need them but you dont care about the brand as much

@mitali all that would be true if you stripped them of features. Would love to hear your thoughts on https://agora.co/

@itsalexgarey If you never lose your enthusiasm for using the product you make, it's the right idea. Just find a few million people like you.

@troyshu I asked this above :)

@eriktorenberg Oops, you beat me to it! thanks :)

@eriktorenberg Better yet, What would be one more line to what song if he could add it today?

@julianmiller That's a great question. If the deal had fallen apart, I would have kept running the company. I don't know what I would have done differently. The E&Y partner, Dave Price, reviewed every contract that was in question and we followed his recommendation exactly. The whole thing had nothing to do with the business, because we got all the cash up front. It was just the worst big company CYA imaginable.

@anwaaramjad it's all in The Hard Thing About Hard Things :)

@albuquerquing I really felt that I couldn't quit. I raised all the money, recruited everyone in, my friends and relatives bought the stock on the public market. I would have rather died than quit.

@bhorowitz this is an amazing response, and probably tells us more about you than any other answer on here. Appreciate the honesty.

@prasad_pingali I think this is an interesting article which partially explains it: http://www.fool.com/investing/ge... "The parity between Facebook and Twitter when it comes to providing news to users shows a failure of execution on Twitter's part. About 100% of Twitter users should be getting news from the platform; it's by far its most useful application. A focus on news content going forward could lead Twitter to higher engagement rates and renewed user growth. It could also help differentiate the company from Facebook as a news source before Facebook takes complete control of how we use the Internet. The Pew survey found that 9% of Twitter news users consider it their most important source (versus just 4% for Facebook). Increasing that percentage is key to increasing engagement on the platform. That will lead to better ad revenue growth, better margins, and better earnings."

@sycren yeah, but apple? Samsung? Looks like everyone is throwing a hat in the ring which is surprising.

@prasad_pingali With Apple & Samsung, could it be that they are trying to lock users onto their own platform? These 2 companies are each others biggest competitors in the phone space.

@kyeshimizu I am looking forward to learning about it next week!

@penelope_rm Have the courage to think for yourself!

@spinoodle First, AirBnB, because they are a great company with a great culture and a massive network effect. Brian Chesky is amazing. Second, historically speaking this is a very easy time to raise money. So just do your thing.

@dsanchez794 Maybe, but I don't know why you would try. Why start a company with a massive disadvantage? Probably better to move (if possible).

@jdbt In general, the first principle of raising money is get the money. If you have choices, the positive about an Asian investor is usually access to connections in Asia. On the negative side, the big ones are a) not a strong positive signal for the next round of investors b) if the investor is Chinese, it may raise flags in the US Defense and Intelligence markets c) They may have different ethics about when they exit than US investors (although there is a lot of variance with US investors too).

@bhorowitz Thank you so much for taking the time to reply! Great advice.

@adhambad I don't think there's really a contrast between Paul and me on this. The culture can and should be friendly, but the expectations, standards and accountability need to be high.

@influencerstv1 They did a great job on that movie. It was so real that it gave me flashbacks.

@craiwai I think that language matters. If you are so disconnected from the culture that you no longer even know the current buzzwords, that's probably a bad sign.

@ma7madsayed I enjoy it more. I think that it has to do with my personality. I am more excited to see entrepreneurs that I work with succeed than I ever was for myself.

@dihaynes By the way, my name is Candida Haynes. It didn't occur to me that logging in with Twitter would obscure my identity. Sorry!

@jgcatalano To be an entrepreneur, you have to be willing to be completely vulnerable and think entirely for yourself. I imagine those can be learned, but I am not sure.

@jdcarlu add ;) If you could interview one person in the history of the world, who would it be?

@patosainz YES.

@joshvoydik They are both great, but Biggie is a little closer to my personal taste.

@coreybass I am not, but I am a big fan of his. As you might of noticed, I tend to say what's on my mind regardless of whether it's good for me, so I don't need a pseudonym

@stella The book that most inspired my book was Andy Grove's High Output Management. It's hard for me to list my top 3 favorites. Some that I like in various categories. The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James, Fooled By Randomness by Nasim Taleb, and Tuff by Paul Beatty.

@jactorrez This rap career is not going to work out.

@richard_sink There is a freedom to it in that it enables me to have new goals :-).

@ma7madsayed I really hope so. I think that geographical/regulatory arbitrage will help with this. Already the UK has been very aggressive about easing regulation to spark innovation.