How to Manage with Ben Horowitz (How to Start a Startup 2014: Lecture 15)
Key ideas
Horowitz teaches one management concept: before a critical decision, see it through the eyes of the whole company, including people who are not in the room.
From a machine transcript of the audio. Quotes link to the moment they are said.
- 1
See decisions through the whole company
Horowitz teaches one concept: before a critical decision, work out how it will read to everyone in the company, including people not in the room. He says this is hard because decisions come under pressure, so his advice is to pause and say you need to think it through. He closes with Toussaint's choices about defeated soldiers and slave owners in Haiti as his largest example.
- 2
Demotion tells everyone what failure means
Horowitz walks through a CEO wanting to demote, not fire, a hard-working executive who was out of his depth. He asks how engineers on 0.1% or 0.2% would see someone holding 1.5% after losing the job, and says the real question is whether effort or results keep your equity. He adds the answer can differ for someone promoted past their level without that equity.
- 3
Give raises by process, not on request
Horowitz warns that granting a raise to whoever asks tells the employee who did not ask that performance is not really evaluated, and that word will get out. His answer is a formal, periodic review that gathers input, with no off-cycle changes, which he says protects the culture and leaves people more comfortable.
- 4
Company policy declares who you value
Reviewing a blog post by Sam, who invited him, on ten-year option exercise windows, Horowitz says companies should reevaluate the 90-day window but stops short of saying all should adopt a longer one. He weighs a departing employee's sense of fairness and the reputational risk against the people who stay, then offers two honest positions: a long window, or a clear upfront statement that the stock rewards those who stay.
- 5
Be honest in private, protect dignity publicly
Answering a question on firing executives, Horowitz says to avoid both contempt and mushiness, and that a useful start is admitting you misjudged the match when hiring. Speaking to the company, he says to thank the person and skip the details, since what you say there becomes their reputation.
In Ben’s words
“When you're making a critical decision, you have to understand how it's going to be interpreted from all points of view.”
Ben Horowitz·How to Manage with Ben Horowitz (How to Start a Startup 2014: Lecture 15)·Watch at 1:41(opens the original in a new tab)“The cultural conclusion is going to be everybody in your company is going to feel that they now have a fiduciary responsibility to their family to ask for a raise all the time.”
Ben Horowitz·How to Manage with Ben Horowitz (How to Start a Startup 2014: Lecture 15)·Watch at 12:20(opens the original in a new tab)“You can take somebody's job, you have to take their job, and this is something Bill Campbell taught me, but you don't have to take their dignity.”
Ben Horowitz·How to Manage with Ben Horowitz (How to Start a Startup 2014: Lecture 15)·Watch at 39:02(opens the original in a new tab)About this entry
- Published
- Apr 20, 2017
- Channel
- Y Combinator
- Type
- Video
- Length
- 49:59
- Language
- English
- Added
- Nov 2, 2026
- Source last checked
- Nov 2, 2026
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