Mike Nudelman/Business Insider
Venture capitalist Ben Horowitz, illustrated.
Welcome to an early November edition of Success Insider.
Here are some of the most exciting stories we've told on BI Prime over the past week about how and why and who gets amazing things done.
A legendary VC on building company cultures
Eventually, Ben Horowitz got to a point of "nobody can't tell me nothing."
This, he explained to our correspondent Shana Lebowitz, was when he got to a place of no longer being managed. He had founded, lead, and sold a company, Opsware, and had been working as a VP at HP.
"I already felt like I knew too much, at least about running an organization," he explained. "And whether I did or not, it didn't matter, because that's how I felt. So I got myself to a point where I was unmanageable."
But enterprise tech would not be enough for Horowitz, and so soon he'd be founding a new kind of venture fund with Marc Andreessen, who'd gone through the Opsware adventure with him, which they together sold to HP for $1.6 billion in 2007. As of this writing, the firm has some $10 billion in assets and has invested in Facebook, Airbnb, and Lyft, among many others.
His new book, "What You Do Is Who You Are," is about building company cultures, including how to interview for culture fit, and how his long tutelage in running companies has shaped the way he evaluates founders.
Podcasts to expand your business knowledge
At Success Insider we love learning, we strive to be self-taught, and we do our best to not be pedantic autodidacts about the whole thing.
Hence why we're so excited about a feast for the ears (how seasonal!) that writer Robin Madell put together. The reporter interviewed tons of leaders and academics about the podcasts that are equivalent to an MBA, and topics range from management to psychology to product management to case studies from Harvard Business School.
And a survey of other highlights
Some other awesome pieces include:
- Stanley Black & Decker's innovation push shows how a 176-year-old company can still adopt a startup mentality to pursue new products. Its chief technology officers dished on all the initiatives underway at the consumer and industrial tool manufacturer.
- Tech and non-tech companies alike are in the midst of major cultural shifts to support the adoption of artificial intelligence. But surprisingly, that change may be more difficult for the legacy tech firms, according to IBM's global chief data officer.
- 'You're planning to ask for a raise?' says a Harvard Business School professor, 'Stop right there.' Here are 7 rules for reframing your salary conversation for success. And how to get into the conversation with confidence and excitement instead of anxiety.
- He wanted to pay off a car lease, and now makes over $30,000 selling critters to reptile pet owners on the side. It all happened because he targeted a winning SEO keyword.
- The six women-owned businesses in Amazon's "Small Business of the Year" awards told Business Insider how entrepreneurs can capture ideas, get funding, and continue to develop and grow their businesses. They also shared a run-down of their most-used tools.
- We had an in-depth conversation with the head of the world's largest stock exchange about her career and why we need to rethink the public markets. NYSE President Stacey Cunningham also told us why she sued the SEC.
That's it for this week.
See you Monday.