Ben Horowitz: Your Company Story Is Your Strategy, and Founders Keep Skipping It
a16z · x · 2026-10-20
a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz argues that "the story of the company is also the strategy of the company." Strategy shifts a little every day in a founder's head, and a quarter later it can look very different from where it started — so the narrative needs constant, deliberate updating.
He recommends keeping the story in written form and sharing it with everyone in the company, every recruit, every investor, and every customer.
The core problem, he says, is that writing the story "doesn't feel like work," which is exactly why founders skip it — even though it may be one of the most important parts of the job.
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