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How To Lead | Ben Horowitz on My First Million

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How To Lead | Ben Horowitz on My First Million

The a16z Show

2025/12/02
The a16z Show

The a16z Show

2025/12/02
OverviewShownoteHighlightsTranscriptChaptersPins

Shownote

A16Z co-founder Ben Horowitz joins Shaan Puri and Sam Parr on My First Million to talk about how to be a great leader.   Resources: Follow Ben on X: https://x.com/bhorowitz Follow Shaan on X: https://x.com/ShaanVP Follow Sam on X: https://x.com/thesam...

Highlights

In a candid conversation on My First Million, Ben Horowitz dives into the messy, human side of leadership—where emotional intelligence trumps procedure and real decisions shape companies more than policies ever could.
12:44
Avoiding hard conversations as CEO leads to organizational decay and high turnover.
29:52
Hesitation kills potential more than wrong decisions—CEOs must trust their judgment like football players trust their eyes.
40:47
The number one song in the country is an AI country song, and an AI artist got a record deal.
45:47
Talking smack about entrepreneurs leads to termination — the firm is pro-dream-builder, not dream-killer.
1:05:45
Grandmaster Kaz wrote the first great hip-hop song but was not paid or credited.

Chapters

When should leaders choose courage over comfort in tough decisions?
00:00
How do the best tech CEOs master both code and human nature?
17:38
Can AI become a creative force in music and national defense?
32:16
What does it take to build a culture that actually sticks?
45:47
Why do true pioneers so often get left behind by success?
1:05:45

Transcript

Ben Horowitz: You kind of strive to get to a point of honesty, true honesty, where you're not lying to yourself. That's hard. To show you what a great CEO he ended up being, he created this two-month boot camp for everybody in product management. Every eng...