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  1. Articles from ben's blog

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    1. Is Now the Time to Hire MBAs?

      Explore ben's blog (May 18 2012) Recruiting

      Conventional wisdom among smart technology entrepreneurs says not to hire people with Masters in Business Administration (MBAs) into startups. Aaron Patzer, founder of Mint, expressed the sentiment well when he said: “When valuing a startup, add $500k for every engineer, and subtract $250k for every MBA.” My friend Peter Thiel once warned a young entrepreneur:… (Read Full Article)

      Mentions:   Andreessen Horowitz   Sun Microsystems   Bill Campbell

    2. Demoting A Loyal Friend

      Explore ben's blog (Apr 24 2012) Recruiting , Productivity

      When I started Loudcloud, I hired the best people that I knew—people whom I respected, trusted and liked. Like me, many of them did not have deep experience in the jobs that I gave them, but they worked night and day to make it work and they made great contributions to the company. Yet for… (Read Full Article)

    3. Management Debt

      Explore ben's blog (Jan 19 2012)

      Thanks to Ward Connelly, the metaphor technical debt is now a well-understood concept. While you may be able to borrow time by writing quick and dirty code, you will eventually have to pay it back—with interest. Often this trade-off makes sense, but you will run into serious trouble if you fail to keep the trade-off… (Read Full Article)

    4. Looking Bigger

      Explore ben's blog (Oct 5 2011) Marketing

      My partner Scott Weiss has a new blog and he just wrote a solid post about building legitimacy as a startup. (Read Full Article)

      Mentions:   Scott Weiss

    5. Ridiculously Transparent

      Explore ben's blog (Sep 2 2011)

      This is a guest post by Scott Weiss, general partner of Andreessen Horowitz. I had a real struggle preparing to be a public company CEO. And it had little to do with having scalable internal systems or making the quarterly numbers… I just couldn’t keep secrets from my employees. As CEO of IronPort, I wanted… (Read Full Article)

      Mentions:   Andreessen Horowitz   Cisco   Scott Weiss

    6. Preparing To Fire an Executive

      Explore ben's blog (Aug 24 2011) Recruiting

      When you recruit an executive, you paint a beautiful picture of her future in your company. You describe in great depth and color how awesome it will be for her to accept your offer and how much better it will be for her than joining that other company. Then one day you realize you must… (Read Full Article)

      Mentions:   Microsoft   Bill Campbell

    7. When Employees Misinterpret Managers

      Explore ben's blog (Jul 20 2011)

      When I ran Opsware, we had the non-linear quarter problem also known affectionately as the hockey stick. The hockey stick refers to the shape of the revenue graph over the course of a quarter. Our hockey stick was so bad that one quarter, we booked 90% of our new bookings on the last day of… (Read Full Article)

      Mentions:   Netscape

    8. The CEO’s CEO

      Explore ben's blog (Apr 27 2011) Marketing

      Great chefs find things in the style, presentation and technique used in a meal that the ordinary diner never sees. Great musicians hear things that casual listeners completely miss. CEOs evaluate other CEOs much differently than the popular press or the general population. In mainstream thinking, the absolute success of the company determines the CEO’s… (Read Full Article)

      Mentions:   Oracle   IBM   Bill Campbell

    9. Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO

      Explore ben's blog (Apr 15 2011)

      TOM HAGEN Mike, why am I out? MICHAEL CORLEONE You’re not a wartime consigliere. Things may get tough with the move we’re trying. —Scene from The Godfather Recently, Eric Schmidt stepped down as CEO of Google and founder Larry Page took over. Much of the news coverage focused on Page’s ability to be the “face… (Read Full Article)

      Mentions:   Apple   Eric Schmidt   Intel

    10. What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology

      Explore ben's blog (Apr 1 2011) Recruiting

      By far the most difficult skill for me to learn as CEO was the ability to manage my own psychology. Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared to keeping my mind in check. Over the years, I’ve spoken to hundreds of CEOs all with the same… (Read Full Article)

      Mentions:   Andreessen Horowitz   Hewlett-Packard

    11. Titles and Promotions

      Explore ben's blog (Mar 17 2011)

      Often when I meet with startups, the employees have no job titles. This makes sense, because everybody is just working to build the company. Roles needn’t be clearly defined and, in fact, can’t be, because everyone does a little bit of everything. In an environment like this there are no politics and nobody is jockeying… (Read Full Article)

      Mentions:   Andy Grove   Mark Zuckerberg   Marc Andreessen

    12. Is it OK to Hire People from Your Friend’s Company?

      Explore ben's blog (Feb 23 2011) Recruiting

      Every good technology company needs great people. The best companies invest time, money, and sweat equity into becoming world-class recruiting machines. But how far should you take your quest to build the world’s greatest team? Is it fair game to hire employees from your friend’s company? Will you still be friends? First, what do I… (Read Full Article)

      Mentions:   California

    13. Should You Sell Your Company?

      Explore ben's blog (Jan 19 2011) Marketing

      One of the most difficult decisions that a CEO ever makes is whether or not to sell her company. Logically, determining whether selling a company will be better in the long term than continuing to run it stand-alone involves a huge number of factors, most of which are speculative or unknown. And if you are… (Read Full Article)

      Mentions:   BMC   Hewlett Packard   Microsoft

    14. When Smart People are Bad Employees

      Explore ben's blog (Jan 4 2011)

      In hi-tech, intelligence is always a critical element in any employee, because what we do is difficult and complex and the competitors are filled with extremely smart people. However, intelligence is not the only important quality. Being effective in a company also means working hard, being reliable, and being an excellent member of the team.… (Read Full Article)

      Mentions:   Kanye West   Michael Jordan   NBA

    15. Ones and Twos

      Explore ben's blog (Dec 16 2010)

      In Jim Collins’ best selling management book Good to Great, he demonstrates through massive research and comprehensive analysis that when it comes to CEO succession, internal candidates dramatically outperform external candidates. The core reason is knowledge. As I discussed in Why We Prefer Founding CEOs, knowledge of technology, prior decisions, culture, personnel, et al tend… (Read Full Article)

      Mentions:   Steve Ballmer   Microsoft   Bill Gates

    16. Meet the New Enterprise Customer, He’s a Lot Like the Old Enterprise Customer

      Explore ben's blog (Nov 15 2010) Marketing

      Every day I hear from entrepreneurs, angel investors and venture capitalists about an exciting new movement called “the consumerization of the enterprise.”  They tell me how the old expensive Rolex wearing sales forces are a thing of the past and, in the future, companies will “consume” enterprise products proactively like consumers pick up Twitter. But… (Read Full Article)

      Mentions:   IBM   New York   California

    17. Hiring Executives: If You’ve Never Done the Job, How Do You Hire Somebody Good?

      Explore ben's blog (Oct 14 2010) Recruiting

      “Concrete shoes won’t help in the river I don’t care if you is Michael Phelps my n*&#a” —Lil’ Wayne The biggest difference between being a great functional manager and being a great  general manager—and particularly a great CEO—is that as a general manager, you must hire and manage people who are far more competent at… (Read Full Article)

      Mentions:   Oracle   Wisconsin   Tony Robbins

    18. The Right Way to Lay People Off

      Explore ben's blog (Sep 21 2010)

      “I’m tryin’ to right my wrongs, But it’s funny them same wrongs helped me write this song” —Kanye West Shortly after we sold Opsware to Hewlett-Packard, I had a conversation with the legendary venture capitalist Doug Leone of Sequoia Capital. He wanted to hear the story of how we went from doomed in the eyes… (Read Full Article)

      Mentions:   Sequoia Capital   Bill Campbell   EDS

    19. The Right Kind of Ambition

      Explore ben's blog (Aug 29 2010)

      “Some say that I’m they favorite But I aint hearing none of that I’m about my team ho Young money running back” —Drake “Stay in your place While I sit here and rule I’m king of a cow And I’m king of a mule” —Yertle the Turtle In my last post, I mentioned that you… (Read Full Article)

      Mentions:   Nike   Marc Andreessen

    20. How to Minimize Politics in Your Company

      Explore ben's blog (Aug 24 2010)

      “Who the f@#k you think you f$&kin’ with I’m the f%*kin’ boss.” —Rick Ross In all my years in business, I have yet to hear someone say: “I love corporate politics.” On the other hand, I meet plenty of people who complain bitterly about corporate politics—sometimes even in the companies they run. So, if nobody… (Read Full Article)

      Mentions:   Andy Grove   Senate

    21. Taking the Mystery out of Scaling a Company

      Explore ben's blog (Aug 2 2010)

      “What you got a dollar in your pocket A twenty in your wallet? See me I’m stacking money Matter of fact, I’ll let you watch it Get big Get big Get big Get big” —Dorrough If you want to build an important company, then at some point you have to scale. People in startup land… (Read Full Article)

      Mentions:   Andy Grove   Google   Facebook

    22. Why CEOs Should Tell It Like It Is

      Explore ben's blog (Jul 2 2010)

      Unemployment at a record high People coming, people going, people born to die Don’t ask me, because I don’t know why But it’s like that, and that’s the way it is –Run DMC My single biggest personal improvement as CEO occurred on the day when I stopped being too positive. As a young CEO, I… (Read Full Article)

      Mentions:   At&T

    23. Second Startup Syndrome

      Explore ben's blog (Jun 14 2010)

      “When your ups lift you down your placebo is too weak you’re in the syndrome” —Parliament Often when super successful entrepreneurs found their second company, they suffer from a dangerous condition. In fact, the more successful the original startup, the more likely it is that the entrepreneur develops an acute case of Second Startup Syndrome.… (Read Full Article)

    24. How Andreessen Horowitz Evaluates CEOs

      Explore ben's blog (May 30 2010)

      “I mean damn, did you even see the test You got D’s, motherf*$@%&, D’s! Rosie Perez” —Kanye West No position in a company is more important than the CEO and, as a result, no job gets more scrutiny. Sadly, little of this analysis benefits CEOs as most of the discussions happen behind their backs. This post is a step… (Read Full Article)

      Mentions:   Jeff Bezos   Harvard Business School   Andreessen Horowitz