What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture

by Ben Horowitz

I knew why I hired Mark: when I interviewed him, I could tell he had the urgency, the know-how, and the discipline we needed. But I did not understand why he took the job. He knew we were losing and, given our granola-eating demographics, that we were probably losers. So what made him take the risk? I recently asked him, and his reason surprised me: I had risen as far as I could at an east-coast-based company called PTC; they had nepotistic politics at the top level. I must have looked at forty sales jobs in Boston and there was nothing good. The Opsware recruiter called several times and I finally called him back and said, “I’m not going to California. In California the real estate sucks, the culture sucks, and they don’t appreciate the sales side. Plus, isn’t that the company the BladeLogic guys call Oopsware? What do you think, I’m fuckin’ stupid?” He keeps calling and finally, I say “Fine, I’ll go meet Marc and Ben, but that’s it.” [Marc Andreessen was the company’s cofounder.] Then I look at my BlackBerry when I land in San Francisco and I see there’s a whole fucking crew I have to interview with. So I go over and you come out of your cubicle and I’m like, Fucking cube company. The cubes confirmed my initial suspicions: soft, beach boys, consensus, everyone gets a say. That’s fine for engineering, but sales and marketing have to go to battle every day, so people in those groups need to fall in line. Then I’m looking at the conference room names—Salt-N-Pepa, Notorious ...