About the book
Culture, in Ben Horowitz's definition, is how a company makes decisions: the assumptions staff use to settle everyday problems, such as whether a trip calls for the Four Seasons or a Red Roof Inn. The venture capitalist argues that culture without purpose ends up an accident or a mistake. He studies four models: Toussaint Louverture, who led Haiti's slave revolt, the only successful one; the Samurai, rulers of Japan for 700 years; Genghis Khan; and Shaka Senghor, a convicted murderer who ran a prison gang and later transformed prison culture. He links them to modern cases such as Uber under Travis Kalanick and Netflix under Reed Hastings. It reached the New York Times best-seller list.
Bobby Voicu, founder of The CEO Library, pointed to it while recalling how he struggled with company culture in the early days of MavenHut.
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Bobby Voicu (Founder/The CEO Library)
Ben Horowitz recently published another book called "What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture".
When we were starting MavenHut, company culture was one of the things I struggled with.
I mean, I worked 70 hours/week, should my employees do the same (no, of course not!). My business parteners were working weekends as well during the early days of the company, I didn't want to. But people say that the leaders of the company should be part of the culture. So?
I just found out about the book so I only read the first few chapters, but it goes some ways I didn't think about.
The first part of the book is about the slave rebellion that created, in the end, Haiti. What is so interesting about this? Well, it's apparently the only slave rebellion in the world that was successful in creating a new country. How is it connected to company culture? I have no idea yet.
There's, apparently, another chapter on a prison gang. And another on Genghis Khan.
If you are confused, you're not the only one. But since I trust the author, I'm sure it will make sense at some point.
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