Lesson 1: Making Hard Decisions the Smart Way | Ben Horowitz
October 13, 2025
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5:56Now PlayingLesson 1: Making Hard Decisions the Smart Way | Ben Horowitz
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as posted by the channelTelling a friend the hard truth. Enforcing a rule your team dislikes. Holding someone accountable when it would be easier to look the other way. In life — and especially in leadership — doing the right thing often means making someone unhappy. This paradox is one of the trickiest challenges of leading others.
But venture capitalist Ben Horowitz argues that great leaders don’t avoid tough decisions — instead, they make them by leaning into courage. In this video lesson, he explains how you can do so in a way that upholds your integrity while prioritizing your organization’s long-term success.
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About Ben Horowitz:
Ben Horowitz is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The Hard Thing About Hard Things and What You Do Is Who You Are. He also created the a16z Cultural Leadership Fund to connect the greatest 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 $1.6 billion in 2007, and was appointed vice president and general manager of Business Technology Optimization for Software at HP. Earlier, he was vice president and general manager of America Online’s E-commerce Platform division, where he oversaw development of the company’s flagship Shop@AOL service. Previously, Ben ran several product divisions at Netscape Communications. He also served as vice president of Netscape’s widely acclaimed Directory and Security product line. Before joining Netscape in July 1995, he held various senior product marketing positions at Lotus Development Corporation.
Ben has an MS and a BA in computer science from UCLA and Columbia University, respectively.
Ben serves on the board of Anyscale, Databricks, Mayvenn, NationBuilder, Navan, Okta ($OKTA), and UnitedMasters.
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