Photo by Elisabeth Fall

“One of the key insights from Bushido is that a culture is not a set of beliefs, it’s a set of actions.”
— Ben Horowitz

Ben Horowitz (@bhorowitz) is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is the author of The New York Times bestseller, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, and the upcoming Harper Business book, What You Do Is Who You Are, available October 29th. He also created the a16z Cultural Leadership Fund to connect cultural leaders to the best new technology companies, and enable more young African Americans to enter the technology industry.

Prior to a16z, Ben was cofounder and CEO of Opsware (formerly Loudcloud), which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007. Previously, Ben ran several product divisions at Netscape Communications, including the widely acclaimed Directory and Security product line.

Ben has an MS and BA in Computer Science from UCLA and Columbia University, respectively.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Stitcher, Castbox, or on your favorite podcast platform.

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This episode is also brought to you by Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel, LinkedIn’s podcast now in its second season, and it is full of advice you can start using today.

Each week, Jessi sits down with featured guests to investigate the role work plays in our lives, and how to make it work for us. This season, one of the first episodes I recommend checking out is with Jerry Colonna. I’ve worked with Jerry in the past, and he is one of the start-up world’s most in-demand executive coaches. In the episode, Jerry shares his approach to meetings, explains how to ask good open-ended questions, and he also goes through his approach to daily journaling.

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Want to hear an episode with the other half of Andreessen Horowitz? — Listen to my conversation with Marc Andreessen, in which we discuss debating Peter Thiel, investing rules, artificial intelligence, the future of cryptocurrency, and much more. (Stream below or right-click here to download):

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

• Connect with Ben Horowitz:

Andreessen Horowitz | Twitter

• What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture by Ben Horowitz
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz
• Andreessen Horowitz
• a16z Cultural Leadership Fund
• Opsware
• Netscape Communications
• Intel
• Moore’s Law Definition, Investopedia
• Fairchild Semiconductor
• High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove
• Ben’s Foreword to the Reprint of High Output Management
• Ben Horowitz: Nailing the Hard Things, Stanford eCorner
• What is Emotional Intelligence (EQ)? PsychCentral
• Confucianism, Asia Society
• The Essence of Leadership: Leadership Lessons from Colin Powell, Dando
• Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager by Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz
• Silicon Valley’s Stealth Power, Fortune
• Electronic Data Systems (EDS)
• Chief Officer Abbreviations Explained: CEO, COO, CFO, and More by Dr. Diane Hamilton
• The Basics of Corporate Structure, Investopedia
• The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution by C.L.R. James
• My American Journey by Colin Powell and Joseph E. Persico
• The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries
• Making Yourself a CEO by Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz
• What Was the Bolshevik Revolution? American Historical Association
• The Bushido Code: The Eight Virtues of the Samurai, The Art of Manliness
• The Haitian Revolution: History of a Successful Slave Revolt, ThoughtCo.
• Caesar’s Commentaries by Julius Caesar

SHOW NOTES

• Who is Andy Grove, and why is he interesting to Ben? [04:39]
• How did Ben come to write the foreword to the updated reprint of Andy’s highly influential High Output Management, and what does he consider to be the most valuable takeaways from this book? [06:35]
• As someone who, like Andy Grove, has a scientific background, how does Ben think about management and the problems in the world of business that need to be solved? [11:21]
• How does Ben distinguish between management and leadership? [15:19]
• When he was still working at Netscape, Ben wrote a paper called Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager. What brought this paper about and what impact did it have on Ben and the other people at the company? [17:20]
• What was Ben’s relationship with famed Silicon Valley coach Bill Campbell like, and what are some of the most important lessons he learned from him? [20:45]
• What allows someone like a Bill Campbell or an Oprah Winfrey to read people so intuitively within minutes of meeting them? [24:34]
• How does Ben advise a first-time executive who might have plenty of product knowledge, but not much experience with managing people or the nuances of a growing business? [26:45]
• Aside from High Output Management, what books would Ben recommend for first-time founders? [32:11]
• How does Ben teach first-time CEOs one of the most important skills of the position: the ability to be good at the job and its difficult decisions without worrying about being liked? [35:01]
• What tools or techniques has Ben found useful for someone in a leadership position to manage their own psychology? [37:44]
• Self-talk for someone in a high threat, one shot, one kill situation. [41:28]
• As someone whose superpower may be running toward scary things instead of away from them, what does Ben mean when he says “sharpen the contradictions?” [43:51]
• After telling himself he would never write another book, what prompted Ben to write his latest, What You Do Is Who You Are, and what is he trying to convey about creating and maintaining a desirable company culture? [46:44]
• “A culture is not a set of beliefs, it’s a set of actions.” How would Ben suggest that people in a position to create a company culture refine their thinking about what works and what doesn’t? [50:27]
• One significant example of how Andreessen Horowitz tries to differentiate its own culture from those of other venture capital firms Ben has observed. [51:53]
• Is culture something that someone has to get right at the get-go, or is it possible to do a rehaul and make it work without replacing all of the employees at a company? [53:55]
• What did Toussaint L’Ouverture do to militarize a slave culture that was able to successfully resist the most powerful European powers of the day and create an independent state? [56:52]
• What would it take for Ben to feel like the message of What You Do Is Who You Are is getting through to its audience? What would it take for him to consider the book a success? [1:03:33]
• What would Ben’s billboard say? [1:07:00]
• Parting thoughts. [1:08:25]

PEOPLE MENTIONED

Posted on: October 24, 2019.

Please check out Tribe of Mentors, my newest book, which shares short, tactical life advice from 100+ world-class performers. Many of the world's most famous entrepreneurs, athletes, investors, poker players, and artists are part of the book. The tips and strategies in Tribe of Mentors have already changed my life, and I hope the same for you. Click here for a sample chapter and full details. Roughly 90% of the guests have never appeared on my podcast.

Who was interviewed? Here's a very partial list: tech icons (founders of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Craigslist, Pinterest, Spotify, Salesforce, Dropbox, and more), Jimmy Fallon, Arianna Huffington, Brandon Stanton (Humans of New York), Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ben Stiller, Maurice Ashley (first African-American Grandmaster of chess), Brené Brown (researcher and bestselling author), Rick Rubin (legendary music producer), Temple Grandin (animal behavior expert and autism activist), Franklin Leonard (The Black List), Dara Torres (12-time Olympic medalist in swimming), David Lynch (director), Kelly Slater (surfing legend), Bozoma Saint John (Beats/Apple/Uber), Lewis Cantley (famed cancer researcher), Maria Sharapova, Chris Anderson (curator of TED), Terry Crews, Greg Norman (golf icon), Vitalik Buterin (creator of Ethereum), and nearly 100 more. Check it all out by clicking here.