Wartime vs Peacetime: Ben Horowitz on Leadership

Culture is not a set of beliefs. Missus Soki, it's a set of actions. And Ben says, you owe $20. Okay. So I reach into my wallet, and, you know, the norm was you put the cash on the table. Yeah. So I reach into my wallet and I pull out and I unfortunately only had a $100. And I kinda pull it out and Ben sees it and he's like, we don't make change, motherfucker. Damn. If you show up five minutes late, ten minutes late, then you can say you have respect for what it means to build a company, but you don't really have respect for what it means to build a company, because you wouldn't do that if you did. You know what? It's better to be right than consistent. Today, you'll hear an episode from August 2023, featuring exclusive audio from our Bio and Health Build conference, including a conversation between a sixteen z cofounder Ben Horowitz and Bio and Health general partner, Jorge Conde. They discuss everything from the inspiration behind Ben's book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, which includes a powerful story about how open Internet was secured and how the outcome was far from guaranteed. You'll also hear about surprising leaders from history, the difference between wartime and peacetime CEOs, what building culture really means, and the key differences between bio and health care innovation versus other types of technology. Let's get into it. Morning. Beautiful day today. So obviously, you know, Ben really doesn't need much of an introduction. But I will Yeah. They have Google. But you've done everything. Right? You've been the founder of companies, you've been a CEO, venture capitalist, best selling author. You know, one of the things that to me is incredible is as I go and visit founders, companies that we're fortunate to be investors in, more often than not I see a copy of The Hard Thing About Hard Things or- Yeah, when things go bad, it's my time. And I will tell you, on a personal note, I picked up The Hard Thing About Hard Things when I was a founder, when I was a CEO. I was about seven years into the struggle. It's the capital S struggle. Yeah, yeah. It's the struggle can last a long time. Yeah, man. It was painful. For me, it was a hard read. Yeah. You know, I will say, like, that book, it wasn't even a book for me. It was like an intervention. Like, I I needed it. You said the things that I was feeling that I couldn't articulate. Yeah. So thank you. Thank you for writing it. Yeah. That was a lot of the book was, you know, the things that everybody was feeling and nobody was willing to talk about. Was it hard to write? Yeah. Was it hard to write or did it sort of flow out of you at some point? No. No. No. I was just like …