Wartime vs Peacetime: Ben Horowitz on Leadership

Ben challenges the conventional wisdom that cultural forces drive history, arguing that individual founders make critical differences. He shares the story of how Kip Hickman secured the Internet with SSL in three months at Netscape, preventing Microsoft from creating a proprietary network with transaction fees. Without this individual effort, the open Internet might not exist.

• •The Internet's success was not inevitable - Bill Gates' first edition of 'The Road Ahead' (1995) didn't mention the Internet once
• •Kip Hickman created SSL in 3 months to secure the Internet, enabling it to beat Microsoft's proprietary network
• •Microsoft planned to take a 'vigorous cut' (mafia term) of every Internet transaction if they had won
• •Individual founder efforts determine whether innovations happen now or decades later - affecting lives in healthcare
• •The smartphone could have been open but nobody stepped up, resulting in the 30% Apple Store tax we pay today

Ben highlights Toussaint Louverture as a surprising historical leader who led the only successful slave revolt in history by merging European and slave cultures. Toussaint learned European culture, built a military from a low-trust environment, and created an economy that generated more export income than the United States at the time.

• •Toussaint was born a slave but became smart enough to run the plantation and learn European culture
• •He merged slave and European cultures to build a functional military from a low-trust environment
• •Under his leadership, Haiti had more export income than the United States
• •His downfall came from incorporating Europeans into his army - the hybrid culture he created was used against him
• •Demonstrates how understanding multiple cultures enables building organizations from unlikely elements

Ben defines wartime leadership as rapidly shifting from an old strategy built for one environment to a new strategy for a radically different reality. Using the analogy of switching from fighting the Cold War to fighting ISIS, he explains why wartime CEOs must be willing to be inconsistent and not listen to their teams who are still operating on the old plan.

• •Wartime happens when your entire strategy, KPIs, OKRs, and org design become obsolete overnight
• •The key challenge: getting the team from the old plan to the new plan fast enough to survive
• •Two things people resist in wartime: being inconsistent and not listening to their team
• •You can't listen to your team because they're on the old plan with the old structure and ideas
• •'It's better to be right than consistent' - you must be willing to contradict last week's decisions
• •Most people recognize wartime but freeze instead of acting decisively

Ben redefines culture using Samurai philosophy: culture is not a set of beliefs but a set of actions. He provides concrete examples of how daily behaviors - from email response times to meeting punctuality to how you treat partners - define culture more than mission statements. Abstract concepts like 'integrity' are meaningless without specific behavioral definitions.

• •Culture is all the behaviors: email response time, travel choices (Four Seasons vs Red Roof Inn), partner treatment
• •Being late to meetings reflects whether you truly respect what it means to build a company
• •Abstract values like 'integrity' are pie-in-the-sky unless you define which stakeholder wins when they conflict
• •A16z's 'first class business' means being on time for entrepreneurs - enforced with fines ($20 for lateness, no change given)
• •Cultural values must be hit daily, not just in annual reviews, to prevent natural negative dynamics from taking over
• •Example: 'We're not dream killers' means if you criticize an entrepreneur's idea on Twitter, you're fired

Ben explains why culture doesn't naturally scale beyond 50 people and requires active intervention. When you hire groups from other companies, they bring their old culture by default. He emphasizes the need for mandatory cultural assimilation and daily behavioral reminders to prevent culture from slipping away as the organization grows.

• •Culture works naturally up to 10 people, but breaks down as you scale to 1000+ with multiple subgroups
• •Hiring 8 Google engineers means they'll behave exactly like Google unless you force assimilation
• •Mandatory cultural assimilation is critical - certain cultural tenets cannot be compromised
• •You need daily reminders because you can't be in every meeting to enforce culture yourself
• •Example: 30 people corrected a new hire in Slack for criticizing an entrepreneur's security bug publicly
• •Culture is 'the most team thing you have' - it defines what the place is about

Ben demonstrates that culture can be radically changed through the example of Toussaint transforming a low-trust slave culture into a high-trust military. By making rules like officers can't cheat on their wives (any commitment must be kept), Toussaint built an army that didn't pillage or rape, earning support from white women on the island over European armies.

• •Toussaint made a rule: officers can't cheat on their wives because any commitment must be trustworthy
• •This cultural shift transformed mercenary warfare (pillaging, raping) into a disciplined, trustworthy army
• •The slave army became known for not pillaging - they didn't even have proper clothes
• •White women on the island supported and hid the slave army over European armies due to this behavior
• •Napoleon's general said they'd corner Toussaint but 'there's always an opening' - leading to his name 'L'Ouverture' (the opening)
• •Shows the power of culture-first approach: winning by being trustworthy rather than destructive

Ben argues that culture must create competitive advantage or it's wasted effort. He contrasts Amazon's frugality culture (old doors as desks) supporting their low-price leadership strategy with Apple's high-design culture ($5,000 doorknobs at Cupertino). Culture doesn't come from one person - the whole organization must believe and enforce it.

• •If culture doesn't create competitive advantage, it's a waste - different companies need different cultures
• •Amazon's frugality (doors as desks) reinforced their low-price leader competitive advantage
• •Apple's expensive design culture ($5,000 doorknobs) supports their high-design competitive advantage
• •Culture must align with your core competitive strategy to be effective
• •You can't enforce culture by being in every meeting - the whole organization must internalize and enforce it
• •Culture is 'the most team thing you have' and must be collectively maintained

Ben identifies the key difference between bio/healthcare and traditional tech: both distribution and innovation are dramatically harder. Distribution is 50x harder due to regulators, complex healthcare systems, hospitals, doctors, and patients. Innovation is harder because organizations built for traditional drug development can't easily adapt to AI, CRISPR, or gene therapy.

• •Distribution in bio/healthcare is 50x harder than regular tech due to regulatory complexity
• •Navigating regulators, hospitals, doctors, patients, and payers before running out of cash is extremely difficult
• •Innovation is harder because existing processes aren't built for AI, CRISPR, or gene therapy
• •Incumbents face a choice: radical surgery on the organization or learn from startups
• •The startup-incumbent dynamic is unique: can startups get distribution before incumbents get innovation?
• •Collaboration is often necessary - startups rent expertise/access, incumbents rent innovation

Ben shares his experience studying AI in graduate school when neural networks were considered the one part that wouldn't work. He emphasizes that with fundamental changes this large, you must run at it rather than making quick assessments. Understanding AI deeply can transform what looks like an existential threat into a massive competitive advantage.

• •Ben studied AI in grad school when neural networks were known not to work (could only recognize letters 'a' and 'q')
• •AI was ironically a 'general purpose thing that could only do the most specific thing imaginable'
• •The transformation started in 2012 but massively accelerated since ChatGPT's release
• •Don't jump to quick conclusions like 'it's good for this but not that' or 'we're out of data'
• •Get deep into the details - most people do superficial assessments and miss opportunities
• •What looks like an existential threat can quickly become a competitive advantage if you master it
• •The most dangerous approach: ignoring, dismissing, or giving AI short treatment

Ben closes with a Rakim quote about 'Rent-A-Rappers' who jumped into rap when it was hot but will flip when things go bad. He draws a parallel to founders who entered startups to get rich versus those building something important. In difficult times, only founders with genuine mission stay - the rest run away.

• •Rakim anticipated people jumping into rap because it's hot, then flipping 'like a renegade' when it fades
• •Current environment reveals who's a 'rent-a-founder' versus who's building something important
• •Founders entering to get rich will leave when times get hard
• •Only founders building something genuinely important will stay through difficult periods
• •The song 'Follow the Leader' is described as 'one of the all-time great leadership songs'
• •This moment separates true founders from opportunists