Ben Horowitz on the 1 reason founders fail as CEO

December 12, 2025

The a16z co-founder is asked for the #1 reason founders fail in the CEO role, to which he replies:

“I would say the big thing is a lack of decision — hesitation . . . You can be really smart, but if you wait too long before you pull the trigger, you’re not smart anymore. There’s all kinds of excuses people tell themselves to not make a decision.”

Ben gives firing an executive as an example of a situation where founders often wait too long to make a decision. Founders will often get stuck on issues like, “If we made such a big deal when we hired him, what is the press going to say?” or “What are the people in the company going to say?” or “I don’t have time to hire a new person to do the job.” He reflects:

“There’s all these reasons not to make the decision. And if you think about them for more than five minutes, you go: Well that doesn’t make any sense because this guy is a f’ing up the whole org. Who cares what the press says? Just get rid of him and start rebuilding now.”

Ben continues:

“It’s the lack of confidence that generally causes a no-decision where there really needs to be a decision is what I would say is the common pattern.”

How do founders become more confident? In Ben’s view, that’s personal:

“At the end of the day, confidence is personal and you have to feel it yourself to have it . . . And the thing that causes the crisis in confidence is: you invent something, you hire a bunch of people, you make a decision, it’s wrong, and people really suffer from it. You feel horrible because you’re like, ‘Wow I don’t know what I’m doing, and I made a mistake and it had real consequences.’ Most people in life don’t have a situation like that until they become CEO. And so then it’s like, ‘Well how do I recover from that?’”

In short, confidence has to be earned: You try. You fail. You get back up. You learn from your mistakes.

Do that enough times and you’ll become confident in your ability to handle anything.