Ben Horowitz's Blog, page 2

"Even if it's jazz or the quiet storm
I hook a beat up and convert it into hip-hop form"
-Rakim, "I Ain't No Joke"

"You're quite hostile,
I've got a right to be hostile,
my people been persecuted."
- Public Enemy

"Damn, here we go again
People talking shit, but when shit hit the fan
Everything I'm not, made me everything I am"
—Kanye West, "Everything I Am"

Audio version of the post

"Damn, here we go again
People talking shit, but when shit hit the fan
Everything I'm not, made me everything I am"
—Kanye West, "Everything I Am"

In 2000 Dennis Crowley founded a company called Dodgeball, which built an application that ran on your not-so-smart phone. The point of Dodgeball was to link up with your friends and discover new things to do. It was great fun for extremely social, high tech geeks. The founders eventually sold the Dodgeball to Google in 2005.

In retrospect, Dennis...

“Real quick, whole squad on that real sh*t
0 to 100, n***a, real quick”
—Drake, "0 to 100/The Catch Up"

For the audio version of this postclick here.

“Real quick, whole squad on that real sh*t
0 to 100, n***a, real quick”
—Drake, "0 to 100/The Catch Up"

I am a giant advocate for technical founders running their own companies, but one consistent way that technical founders deeply harm their businesses is by screwing up the budgeting process. Yes, the budgeting process. How ridiculous is that? How does it happen and why is it particularly problematic for engineers?

I'll begin by describing how I screwed it up in my company. Our sales were g...

"To whoever think their words affect me is too stupid
And if you can do it better than me, then you do it"
—Kanye West, "Cold"

One obvious yet underappreciated laws of business physics is: For any given company, the larger the company becomes, the more opportunities emerge to screw it up.

Another obvious, but not well understood law: The more screwed up your company, the more people will complain about it and blame you.

If we take these two together, it is easy to see that without interventi...

"To whoever think their words affect me is too stupid
And if you can do it better than me, then you do it"
—Kanye West, "Cold"

"They call me Jay Electronica – f*ck that
Call me Jay ElecHanukkah, Jay ElecYarmulke
Jay ElecRamadaan, Muhammad A'salaamaleikum
RasoulAllah Subhanahu wa ta'ala through your monitor"
—Jay Electronica, "Exhibit C"