You only get leverage if the person that you hire can do it better than you can. — Ben Horowitz

You only get leverage if the person that you hire can do it better than you can.

Author: Ben Horowitz

Insight: The trap most of us fall into is thinking leverage means delegating your weaknesses. We hand off the stuff we're bad at or hate doing, figure we've solved the problem, and wonder why nothing improves. But that's backwards. Real leverage only happens when you find someone who's actually better at something than you are—someone whose skills or instincts are genuinely superior to yours in that area. This changes everything about how you think about hiring, or even asking for help. It means you need enough self-awareness to know where you're genuinely limiting the work. Your ego has to be okay with admitting "this person will take what I did and make it better." A manager who can't accept that their new hire might run the team meetings better, or the founder who refuses to hire a CFO who actually understands finance—they're not being efficient, they're just staying in control. The counterintuitive part: this requires you to be pretty clear about what you're actually good at. Because you can't recognize someone better than you at something unless you understand the thing well enough to spot excellence. It's less about lowering your standards and more about having the clarity and humility to know when you've found someone who genuinely outclasses you.