Ben Horowitz Quotes

To create something you want to sell, you first study and research the market, then you develop the product to the best of your ability.

Designing a product and understanding how it filters through into the market and into the rest of the company is very important to me.

The concept of Red was to build a camera with as much capability as possible... for the professional market. Then we thought we could extend it down a bit to the prosumer level. Apparently, that was a mistake.

Most of all, I discovered that in order to succeed with a product you must truly get to know your customers and build something for them.

It isn't the consumers' job to know what they want.

Salads was a big indicator of that - there was a huge market out there for it. And why not tap it? Some of the things we are doing now around the globe are responding to customers. It's not because some guy sued you.

When you're thinking about your next product or current product and wondering how to make it different so you don't have competition, understand the job the customer needs to get done.

Research your idea. See if there's a demand. A lot of people have great ideas, but they don't know if there's a need for it. You also have to research your competition.

My cosmetic range, easy4Men, is not going that well. It's meant to be for the no-nonsense man, but now I don't know if the no-nonsense man exists.

I think there is a niche for every market.

The problem with entrepreneurship is we are often working really hard producing high quality products that no-one wants. The creation of stuff is not valued.

If you're an entrepreneur and you're starting a company, I think the first thing you do is you go and talk to a bunch of people. But then the next thing you probably should do is figure out if there's a broader demand than just people you know. That's where I think SurveyMonkey is pretty valuable to people.

The basic idea that marketing is wrong at its core is one of the main reasons why innovation seems blocked and unpredictable.

What the customer demands is last year's model, cheaper. To find out what the customer needs you have to understand what the customer is doing as well as he understands it. Then you build what he needs and you educate him to the fact that he needs it.

We need to reengineer companies to focus on figuring out who the customer is, what's the market and what kind of product you should build.

Too many bar owners built a bar for themselves... when they should have built what their market and demographic demands!

Products are sold because they solve a problem or fill a need. Understanding problems and needs involves understanding customers and what makes them tick.

We basically built a pricing model that surgically identified what people wanted to pay us for and what they didn't want to pay us for. One of the things we figured out early on was that we could create value for people by creating a product that allowed them to design something that they couldn't design without us.

First and deadliest of all is a founder's unwavering belief that he or she understands who the customers will be, what they need, and how to sell it to them.

Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.

A successful business must have a sound knowledge of its market and work on how its product or service will be different, stand out and improve people's lives. If you can ensure it responds to a real need in the market place, your business can punch well above its weight.

Think about the market, think about the design, and think about who is going to design for that market. Hit the mark.

No amount of tools can help a bad product. You have to remain genuine in your product development innovation and quality.

The simplest way to assure sales is to keep changing the product the market for new things is indefinitely elastic. One of the fundamental purposes of advertising, styling, and research is to foster a healthy dissatisfaction.

Research is an organized method of trying to find out what you are going to do after you cannot do what you are doing now. It may also be said to be the method of keeping a customer reasonably dissatisfied with what he has. That means constant improvement and change so that the customer will be stimulated to desire the new product enough to buy it to replace the one he has.