
The Struggle - ssclafani
http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/14/the-struggle/
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temphn
Ben Horowitz is a great entrepreneur and a great investor. But it's pretty
hilarious how he quotes the Geto Boys and Snoop Dogg while being assiduously
politically correct in his writing style ("the women from the girls"?).

You can understand this if you realize that he's actually an ultramasculine
guy, and rap lyrics (caricatured though they be) are the only acceptable way
today to express unbridled, unchecked, dominant masculinity.

But in addition to being ultramasculine, he also loves to win. And you don't
win if you say that stuff outright. No white collar white male can get away
with even 1/1000 the stuff that DMX says on a daily basis. So thus his formal
writing has "hers" and "shes" all over the place, while his true self is
channeled through a rap star messenger than no gender egalitarian can
successfully attack for fear of being dubbed racist.

It is 3D chess after all.

~~~
eaurouge
Wow, I think you're over-analyzing this. First, there's a lot of misogyny in
rap music, I agree, but it's too easy, and wrong, to dismiss all of it as
misogynistic, ultra-masculine braggadocio. There are just too many sub-genres
for a simplistic definition. And, if you spend time listening to rap lyrics,
you'll come across some truly profound verses; some of Lupe Fiasco's stuff is
just mind-blowing. I think Ben Horowitz simply appreciates rap as an art form
and enjoys summarizing his posts with applicable verses. Does there have to be
more to it than that?

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wolfgangbremer
I really love this post by Ben. It feels so honest, shares so many insights
and at the same time gives such encouraging advice.

My favorite parts are where Ben describes the struggle in these one-liners. It
reads like a novel. Incredible. I can feel it when I read it.

And the part where he talks about going public. So encouraging. There's always
a way. Just great.

IMHO we need more posts like this - especially all the founders and co-
founders out there thinking about starting a startup, or thinking about
finding a (technical) co-founder. This kind of honesty and encouragement is
what they need to get started. This is what they need not to loose faith.

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kposehn
> When they teach you how to drive a racecar, they tell you to focus on the
> road when you go around a turn. They tell you that because if you focus on
> the wall, then you will drive straight into the wall.

This is very true.

When I took racing school, my instructor told me the same thing. I learned to
focus on the road and the turn; by the end of the course, I nailed every apex
on lacuna seca in my little formula dodge and set a blistering lap time.

Funny thing is, I didn't realize that I'd been applying this to my life ever
since until I read this article.

Thanks, Ben.

~~~
pg
The term for this incidentally is "target fixation." It's a problem for hang-
glider pilots too.

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aginn
Anyone else think it is ironic that he quotes Marx in a capitalist "pig"
column on a website that thrives in a darwinian startup culture?

~~~
nickpinkston
All capitalists want Marxism - to stage their own revolt in an old industry
and wind up on top as dictator of their own little command economy. We aren't
so different, you and I...

~~~
icandoitbetter
Yeah, that's exactly what Marx advocates.

~~~
nickpinkston
Soviets were designed as self-governing co-ops - which is similar incentives
to a startup with widely held equity right? It's not fully the same of course,
but the views aren't so different in their aims.

~~~
_delirium
The closest parallel to an equity structure would probably be to the employee-
owned cooperative firms that exist in some jurisdictions. A crucial difference
from startups is that equity is not tradable, not available to non-working
investors, and cannot be taken with you if you leave the firm. Rather than
owning securitized shares, you definitionally are entitled to a share of
profits while working at the company; and everyone is entitled to the same
share. So, for example, if there are 10,000 employees, you have a 1/10,000
claim on any dividends. If you leave the company, you no longer own shares.
And there is no way to buy shares; cooperatives will generally only accept
investment on bond or loan-like terms, not equity terms.

~~~
nickpinkston
Sure, it's not as flexible, especially the totalitarian systems, though co-ops
aren't as simply structured in their mature forms.

Look up "Mondragon" for what a modern form of distributist co-ops look like.
Not the same share of profits, equity investment is the rule (limited to
workers or co-op friendly orgs), and there are many other interesting aspects.

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endergen
I immediately put on the Lupe Fiasco song he quotes at the beginning while I
read the rest. Made it even more intense.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NHkv0S1NEA>

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mschalle
Incredible.

 _This is not checkers; this is mutherfuckin’ chess... technology moves, the
competition moves, the market moves, the people move_

Couldn't have summed it all up more perfectly

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eragnew
Wow. This is one of the more powerful essays I've read in a while. If you
don't get why that is, please just think about it some more. Think about what
you are telling yourself about it.

