The Struggle is when you don't believe you should be CEO of your company. The Struggle is when you know that you are in over your head and you know that you cannot be replaced. The Struggle is when everybody thinks you are an idiot, but nobody will fire you. The Struggle is where self-doubt becomes self-hatred.

Don't put it all on your shoulders. Nobody takes the losses harder than the person most responsible. When Opsware was losing too many competitive deals, Horowitz called an all-hands and told the whole company they were getting their asses kicked and would die if they didn't stop the bleeding. The team rallied, built a winning product, and saved him.

This is not checkers; this is mutherfuckin' chess — there is always a move. Horowitz took his company public in 2001 (the worst time ever for a tech IPO) with $2M in trailing revenue, 340 employees, and six weeks of cash left.

Focus on the road, not the wall. Racecar drivers are taught this because if you focus on the wall, you drive straight into it. If you focus on how you might fail, you will fail — even with one bullet left, focus on the target.

Don't take it personally. The predicament is probably all your fault — you hired the people, you made the decisions — but every CEO makes thousands of mistakes. Evaluating yourself and giving yourself an 'F' doesn't help.

Play long enough and you might get lucky. In technology, tomorrow looks nothing like today; if you survive long enough to see it, tomorrow may bring the answer that seems impossible now.

The Struggle is not failure, but it causes failure. Especially if you are weak. Always if you are weak. Most people are not strong enough — but The Struggle is also where greatness comes from.