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The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers Hardcover – March 4, 2014
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Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, offers essential advice on building and running a startup—practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn’t cover, based on his popular ben’s blog.
While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. Ben Horowitz analyzes the problems that confront leaders every day, sharing the insights he’s gained developing, managing, selling, buying, investing in, and supervising technology companies. A lifelong rap fanatic, he amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs, telling it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in.
Filled with his trademark humor and straight talk, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz's personal and often humbling experiences.
- Print length304 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarper Business
- Publication dateMarch 4, 2014
- Dimensions6 x 1.01 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100062273205
- ISBN-13978-0062273208
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Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
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“More than any other business book released this year, “Hard Things” gives an insider’s perspective on what it’s like to lead and scale a startup.” — --Business Insider's Best Business Books of 2014
“This is easily one of the essential books every business leader should read if they’re looking for proven and honest management advice.” — --Entrepreneur's 25 Amazing Business Books from 2014
“The most valuable book on startup management hands down” — PandoDaily
“There is more than enough substance in Mr. Horowitz’s impressive tome to turn it into a leadership classic.” — The Economist
From the Back Cover
A lot of people talk about how great it is to start a business, but only Ben Horowitz is brutally honest about how hard it is to run one.
In The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, draws on his own story of founding, running, selling, buying, managing, and investing in technology companies to offer essential advice and practical wisdom for navigating the toughest problems business schools don't cover. His blog has garnered a devoted following of millions of readers who have come to rely on him to help them run their businesses. A lifelong rap fan, Horowitz amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs and tells it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, from cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in.
His advice is grounded in anecdotes from his own hard-earned rise—from cofounding the early cloud service provider Loudcloud to building the phenomenally successful Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm, both with fellow tech superstar Marc Andreessen (inventor of Mosaic, the Internet's first popular Web browser). This is no polished victory lap; he analyzes issues with no easy answers through his trials, including
- demoting (or firing) a loyal friend;
- whether you should incorporate titles and promotions, and how to handle them;
- if it's OK to hire people from your friend's company;
- how to manage your own psychology, while the whole company is relying on you;
- what to do when smart people are bad employees;
- why Andreessen Horowitz prefers founder CEOs, and how to become one;
- whether you should sell your company, and how to do it.
Filled with Horowitz's trademark humor and straight talk, and drawing from his personal and often humbling experiences, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures.
About the Author
Ben Horowitz is the cofounder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley–based venture capital firm that invests in entrepreneurs building the next generation of leading technology companies. The firm's investments include Airbnb, GitHub, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Previously he was cofounder and CEO of Opsware, formerly Loudcloud, which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007. Horowitz writes about his experiences and insights from his career as a computer science student, software engineer, cofounder, CEO, and investor in a blog that is read by nearly ten million people. He has also been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the New Yorker, Fortune, the Economist, and Bloomberg Businessweek, among others. Horowitz lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Felicia.
Product details
- Publisher : Harper Business (March 4, 2014)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 304 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0062273205
- ISBN-13 : 978-0062273208
- Item Weight : 1.08 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1.01 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #8,880 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #45 in Entrepreneurship (Books)
- #64 in Business Management (Books)
- #100 in Leadership & Motivation
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author

Ben Horowitz is the cofounder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that invests in entrepreneurs building the next generation of leading technology companies. The firm's investments include Airbnb, GitHub, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Previously, he was cofounder and CEO of Opsware, formerly Loudcloud, which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007. Horowitz writes about his experiences and insights from his career as a computer science student, software engineer, cofounder, CEO, and investor in a blog that is read by nearly 10 million people. He has also been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the New Yorker, Fortune, the Economist, and Bloomberg Businessweek, among others. Horowitz lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife Felicia.
Follow him on Twitter @bhorowitz and his blog, www.bhorowitz.com.
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Entrepreneurial Thinking Definition
Ben Horowitz is a great entrepreneur according to my definition. Throughout his book his demonstrates (1) self-awareness and (2) creativity, and (3) how he put these into action.
Firstly, self-awareness. In the first chapter, “From Communist to Venture Capitalist” he explains who he is, where he comes from, and what he knows. He explains that “being scared doesn’t mean [being] gutless.” Having enough confidence in yourself to be bold is a key aspect of entrepreneurship; he displayed a great deal of boldness when he bought tangram to secure business with EDS. Then, Ben continues to tell us about his communist background, and how that is an advantage: “I realized that embracing the unusual parts of my background would be the key to making it through. It would be those things that I would bring to the table that nobody else had.” Lastly, he explains his mindset in terms of the following four criteria, which helped him immensely throughout his career: (1) to separate facts from perspective, (2) to “turn your s*** in” which means to be responsible for yourself and your work, (3) to not rely on first impressions, especially those based on appearances, and (4) to “look at the world through priorities.” It is therefore clear from chapter 1 that Ben Horowitz knows himself very well, and because he does, he is both confident and prepared to push himself to the limit.
Secondly, creativity. There are many examples of creativity in the book, but I’ll point to one in particular that shows rigorous creativity. After LoudCloud achieved a period of stability, most CEOs would try to remain in that state, but Ben thought differently. He asked himself, “What are we [LoudCloud] not doing?” The answer was well fought, but it eventually came out: they are not being a software company. And so, Ben rigorously devised a plan to save his and his employee’s careers. After selling LoudCloud, he would start a software company called Opsware and focus on systems automatization. To come up with this decision shows how creativity may be the answer to a struggle. Sometimes it is better to think of alternative solutions than just going forward or backwards, and this is exactly what Ben demonstrates time after time in his book – of course, assuming that everything he says he did is true.
Lastly, action. At this point I am sure that you have noticed that Ben is a man of action – whenever he says something he immediate acts upon it – but I’ll elaborate to further prove this. To save LoudCloud from going bankrupt, he only had two months to resolve his company’s problems in order to save business with his biggest client, EDS. He did, and on top of that was also able to start a group of ten engineers on a project named “Oxide,” whose goal was to separate the opsware software from LoudCloud. Ben did all of this in the 2 months period he was given, meaning that he – and his company – did not wasting any time. Ben asked his employees to come at 8am and leave at 10pm everyday (of course he also stayed those hours). He made sure that everyone worked diligently when they had to “turn their s*** in.” They accumulated enough momentum during the beginning of the 2-month rally to carry them throughout. So when the time ran out, Ben had successfully saved his company and business with EDS. That is why action – and traction – should always be the result of self-awareness and creativity.
Effectual Reasoning
Effectual reasoning has three main principles: the (1) bird in the hand, which means understanding the resources that you have at your disposal, (2) crazy quilt, which means building from the bottom up with an end goal in mind, and (3) pilot in the plane, which means that you want to be in control but not always have all the information. In his book, Ben doesn’t talk explicitly about these principles, but he definitely demonstrates them.
(1) Bird in the Hand. Ben went to college during the computer boom in Silicon Valley. When and where he studied (the resources) provided him a key advantage over other competitors because he had the knowledge to tap into a market that was underdeveloped and growing exponentially. Moreover, he understood that that point in time would also produce people of likeminded prospective. And so, Ben was able to team up with exceptional individuals such as Marc Andreessen (smartest person, according to Ben), Scott Kupor (director of finance), Mark Cranney (head of sales), Shannon Callahan (head of recruiting and HR), Margit Wennmachers (sultan of networking), and Frank Chen (head of product management) to name a few. This is how Ben demonstrates using the resources available to him.
(2) Crazy quilt. Ben’s end goal was to become a successful CEO, but he didn’t know how to get there. And so, he did what any other person would do in his situation: take a step forward and see where that leads him. His first step was to quit his old job and work for Marc Andreessen at Netscape. Circumstances and other people’s involvement lead him to take another step: build Loudcloud with Marc Andreessen. Interesting to note here is that if Ben had not quit his first job, he would not have met Marc Andreeseen and therefore not been able to build LoudCloud. Also, had Marc Andresseen not employed Ben, he would not have recognized Ben’s potential. Again, involvement from other people and circumstances then lead to Ben’s third step: selling LoudCloud and creating Opsware. As you probably guessed, other involvement from other people and circumstances lead to the next step: selling Opsware to HP and creating a venture capital firm with Marc Andreessen. And so, understanding that there are infinite ways of reaching your end goal is important, because it enables you to be flexible with ideas that come along the way. Flexibility to allow other people’s input, and to take advantage of opportunities that you hadn't foreseen. Ben demonstrates this in his journey to become a CEO, and to be honest, he became quite proficient at it.
(3) Pilot in the plane. Suffice it to say that Ben delegated work to the executives of his companies, but he always partnered with Marc Andreessen because he knew that Marc Andreessen set of skills complemented his: Marc Andreessen was the public face of the company because he thrived in that environment; Ben stayed in the background managing the company. He then goes to explain that the most important asset of a company is its employees. In light of the-pilot-in-the-plane principle, it makes a lot of sense that you keep your employees motivated because you will distribute the workload to them. Specifically in chapters 5 and 6, Ben explains the importance of taking care of the people, and creating the right in of culture in your company. The reason why the first priority of a company should be to take care of its people according to him is because they are the most knowledgeable individuals of your company. They know what the problems and strengths are because they do the work; managers, executives and CEOs orchestrate from above and may lack on smaller details. In order to have awareness of those smaller details migrate from the employees to the managers and then executive a great company culture has to be created. A great company culture is one in which workers are encouraged to talk about problems and strengths equally. Where they are awarded and recognized based on merit and not on lobbying skills. Where workers are encouraged to “move fast and break things,” meaning that workers should innovate and strive to cause breakthroughs. In this environment, workers like to go to work because it is interesting and genuinely fun. And when a worker wants to work, he/she is the most valuable asset of a company. That is why Ben knows how to delegate work and responsibility among the different hierarchical levels of his company. In analogy, a plane not only needs a pilot to operate satisfactorily. It also needs a co-pilot, stewardesses, a control tower, engineers, an air marshal, and passengers or else flying a plane is: not possible, not profitable and not safe. Ben knows this.
Stewardess Principle
This principle states that workers are individuals and for that reasons they must be encouraged to use their skills for the better of the company. Just like effectual reasoning has several components to it, so does the Stewardess Principle. Several of the key dimensions of the Stewardess Principle that I wish to discuss are: (1) culture, (2) motivation, and (3) power distance. Ben applies these dimensions to his company, and the result is obvious.
(1) Culture. Suffice it to say that Ben dedicates an entire chapter of his book to discuss how important it is to create the right culture in your company. Specifically, one has to minimize politics, encourage the right kind of ambition, and continuously have one-on-ones. By doing this, a company encourages and ensures that its workers have the right work ethics.
By minimizing politics (which means lobbying in order to achieve promotions or benefits) one reinforces the notion that if an employee works hard he/she will be rewarded accordingly. But most importantly, working hard becomes the only way to move up the ladder. No slacker will be able to lobby his/her way to the top. As a result, workers will not feel treated unjustly.
By encouraging the right kind of ambition, one avoids individual agendas or people trying to gain success at the expense of the company. The right kind of ambition is when a worker genuinely wants the company to succeed, and if the company succeeds he/she succeeds with it. The wrong kind of ambition, by contrast, is when a worker wants to succeed regardless of the company’s success. The way to encourage the right kind of ambition, according to Ben, is to seek out those employees with the wrong kind of ambition and fire them before they can rot others, and to screen possible employers while interviewing.
By establishing one-on-ones workers are able to voice any issues to their managers. According to Ben, during one-on-ones managers should do 10% talking and 90% listening. The main point of a one-on-one is for the worker to voice his thoughts and his concerns. This way if there are any problems in the company, the managers become aware of them and may pass the information along to executives and ultimately the CEO.
(2) Motivation. Motivation follows a well-established culture. If Ben had not established an excellent culture in his company he would not haven been able to ask his workers to come to work from 8am to 10pm for months at a time. As if that was not enough, Ben asked this of his workers on three consecutive occasions. This is evidence of what well-motivated stewards are capable of doing.
(3) Power distance. This dimension explains that because companies are hierarchical systems there is a potential for people to use power to abuse their subordinates. To prevent this from happening in his company, Ben placed top priority on one-on-ones. He almost fired one of his executives because he didn't do his one-on-ones. The point of one-on-ones is mentioned above, but they also an additional psychological effect. When managers listen to works, it shifts the power balance for the duration of the one-on-one. As a result, workers feel that the power distance is bridged, allowing them to work more closely with managers. And that is highly desirable.
And so, this is how Ben Horowitz exemplifies what a successful entrepreneur and CEO is. His self-awareness and creativity (and a few other personal traits) took him all the way to where he stands: co-founder of the Andreessen Horowitez venture capital firm valued at $4 billion.
As the song begins, with Eminem talking over an army drill cadence: "Cause sometimes you just feel tired, feel weak... and when you feel weak, you feel like you wanna just give up... but you got to search within you, and try to find the inner strength... and just pull that s-- out of you... and get that motivation to not give up, and not be a quitter... no matter how bad you wanna just fall flat on your face, and collapse..."
It's the ultimate theme song (if you like rap) for Horowitz' time as CEO of Loudcloud and later Opsware, going through hell - and being forged into steel via incredible trials by fire - along the hard, bloody road to success (seeing Opsware acquired for $1.6 billion). Pulling out the incredibly important lessons from that experience is the purpose of the book.
In another section, Horowitz distinguishes between okay CEOs and great CEOs by pointing out a difference in perspective on how they made it through killer trials. When Horowitz would ask fellow CEOs "how did you do it," as in "How did you survive that brutal gauntlet," okay CEOs would point to something specific. Whereas the great CEOs would simply boil it down to a simple hardcore essence: "I never quit."
They simply refused to give in or give out, as the "Till I Collapse" chorus puts it:
Til the roof comes off, til the lights go out
Til my legs give out, can't shut my mouth
Til the smoke clears out, am I high perhaps
I'm a rip this s--, til my bone collapse...
You must know what this means, on a deep level, to be a great CEO. And the same goes for traders. Nearly all traders, like nearly all CEOs, face their "time in the wilderness" - when nothing feels easy, everything feels impossible, and killer challenges press on every side.
I devoured "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" in less than 24 hours, having heard about it via youtube interview of Horowitz at a tech startup conference. The sense of realness - of someone who has been down in the mud and the blood and fought their way through - was absolutely compelling.
This book - basically a series of guidelines for CEOs and building a business - is not some fluffy management tome written by a theoretical management consultant with no personal concept of what brutally hard decisions are like. This is front-line reporting from a CEO who has gone to war... taken severe casualties... made series after series of life-or-death decisions... motivated troops in the trenches... and ultimately won. (As such, the book will almost certainly offend or turn off those with a more 'civilized', and less emotionally raw, perspective on what company leadership.)
The book had triple resonance for me on three fronts: Entrepreneur, CEO, and Trader. The "building a business" aspect spoke directly to our plans: Mercenary Trader, our financial publishing and trading education startup built on founder sweat equity, is on the cusp of critical mass after four-plus years of blood, sweat and tears. Our model is built around cultivating a true community of traders - monetizing the research we use to trade and invest our own funds (and those of clients), while educating members in our community (in a way that no one else does) that they might join us, share trading and investing ideas, and take their own trading to greater than ever heights.
In terms of hardcore challenges, we have already had to deal with questions like whether to sell a major piece of the business... how to handle joint venture projects (including a major software initiative) gone south... the bloody business of firing people (of course)... and lots of other things, all while managing capital simultaneously.
Ultimately we want to provide seed capital to the breakthrough star traders in our community, having trained them and equipped them with shared community resources - our own version of Julian Robertson's "Tiger Cubs" - and use flowback from publishing profits to further deepen and expand our research capabilities, even while creating a shared idea environment that fosters partnerships and even life-long friendships. Think hedge fund incubator crossed with "trader greatness training" and deep community value-add.
Not unlike what a great Silicon Valley firm cultivates for tech founders (and hence the tie-in to this review)... the VC model of A16Z (Horowitz' and Andreessen's firm) was compelling in this regard too, in the way they took a bunch of long-standing VC industry conventions and simply decided to blow them up.
(I found it hilarious, as an aside, that the historical reason VCs are extremely private, and totally disdainful of publicity, is because this is how the original banking houses did it, like the Rothschilds and whatnot - those guys were publicity-shy because they so often funded both sides of a war.)
For the longest time, as Horowitz makes clear, VCs assumed that tech founders needed "adult supervision." Even worse, they would sometimes try to eyeball a founder to decide if they were "CEO material" based on appearance and superficial impressions, not unlike the worst practices of the redneck talent scouts in "Moneyball" pre-Billy Beane. One almost imagines choosing a candidate to lead an organization simply because he (or she) looks a little better in a tailored suit - which is apparently what actually happens, given an utter lack of substantive process.
Horowitz and Andreessen, in contrast, realized that great tech CEOs are MADE, not born - shaped and created via community experience and support - and that all the truly great tech companies were led to greatness by the passionate founders who created them in the first place (Jobs, Gates, Hewlett and Packard etc).
They thought tech founders would likely be in synch with a vision of empowering founders, rather than expecting to hand their passionate idea over to an empty suit... and they were right. So they set up A16Z, a different kind of VC firm, to facilitate that transition: "Making" the CEO out of the founder, or rather helping the founder to come into his own as CEO, through guidance and support.
This view had deep parallels with a great point of frustration, for yours truly, in respect to the trading industry: There are so many books, so much literature, talking about what makes for a "great trader," or what makes someone "trader material," not unlike someone being "CEO material."
But great traders, like great CEOs, are also MADE - it is at least partly an unnatural thing, as Horowitz says - and there is a huge amount of psychological and emotional development along the way. There is training needed for this stuff. And not the same old "cut losses and let profits run" stuff either, but real, deep, meaningful training. Having potential is not the same thing as being developed - not by a long shot.
If you are serious about building a business, becoming a CEO, or stepping up your game as a trader via leadership lessons with strong cross-application to trading, buy this book.
If brutal honesty turns you off and you prefer a rose-colored-glasses view of reality, however, don't buy this book. It pulls no punches, which is fantastic for those with the clear-eyed courage of Thucydides: "The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it."
Top reviews from other countries
I once owned and ran a tech startup that never got to more than 35, so I’m poorly qualified to comment on the quality of most of the advice.
• I never had to demote a loyal friend. I tried to give my loyal friend Tassos fewer shares than my co-founder Marko, but he did not accept and I backed off and I’m very pleased I backed off.
• I did not lay people off except at the very start and the very end, neither of which really counts.
• In the total absence of silver bullets I had no choice other than to fire “lead bullets” (though mine were probably more like plastic bullets)
• [...] (my company) never hired a big-company executive and had unbelievable luck with the small-company executive, Martin, we got on board
• The 360 review I instituted was a disaster, as all employees thought Orange (our investor) had requested it. I did it, and Orange never found out. Oh, and I got some very harsh reviews. Signed, and all.
• We never got around to giving people titles.
• Yes, we had politics, but none of them were caused by the de facto managers. I basically made a mistake when I had one floor full of men and one full of women. I should have mixed things up. By the time I put Misha among the girls it was already too late.
• I never had to work on a succession plan: to get around a quirk of UK law, I fired Phil, Phil fired Dave and Dave fired me. This (sadly) does not predate Reservoir Dogs, we cannot claim the credit.
• We did not have a recruitment process. We hired each other. Diomidis is the preeminent computer scientist in Greece, and he's a friend. Susana was Sara’s friend. Eva used to sell clothes to Susana at Joseph’s. Sam was Tassos’ girlfriend. Katerina was his sister. Our web designer Tunde was Katerina’s classmate in arts school. Carryn used to work at Ove Arup with Sam. Diomidis recommended Ellie. Nadia worked in Ellie’s local Blockbuster. Damiano worked at Blockbuster illegally after falsifying his age (and went on to manage the Clapham Grand, probably before he got to vote for the first time). Tassos’ friend Misha used to tend bar at Quaglino’s. Ziad used to run the counter at Tassos’ local Maroush. Our customer Alex told us we’re hiring his nephew Ahmad. Who hired Toby? Michael? I never found out. Phil used to run Arbitrage Support when I was at Salomon. Andreas used to sell bonds there. Maria-Lisa and I went to summer school together when we were kids. Jackie’s married to Serkan, my friend Dimitris’ former boss at Booz Allen. Davey boy used to do analyst work for my friend Inma at BNP. Thomas and I met Circuit Le Luc in the south of France, at the AGS driving school. Vicky explained to me she’s joining. My mom explained to me Marilisa is joining. Everybody turned out awesome. Seriously. AWESOME. I could not have wished for better. Pretty much everybody is now either immensely successful or very happy or both, much as I stole a couple years from everyone’s life… Come to think of it, there’s Alex. We actually got him through a proper recruitment process. Small confession, everybody: Alex was on 30k. Just him. It’s what you had to pay for a developer of his experience, Phil and Elias would not settle for less. Oh, and Tunde! He sat me down and blackmailed me one day. And, of course, I backed off and gave him the raise; he’s such a creative genius.
So the book did not really bring me any flashbacks and did not really point out any of the (surely tons of) things I did wrong. And I don’t think I’ll ever get to use the advice in the future, much as I’m running a startup again. If this stuff does not all come naturally to you, I think you’re hosed. If people doubt your honesty, you’re hosed. If people don’t realize you’ll always put the company first, they’re hosed.
The references to “terror” did resonate with me, actually. Mine manifested itself via cataclysmic weight loss, from which I was thankfully delivered by the discovery of Wagamama on Lexington St, though the salesforce did peel apple for me and laid it on my desk on a daily basis, just to make sure. And I got these very clearly psychosomatic pains around my diaphragm. But I think it was the shame I felt toward my loyal investors that caused me the terror, rather than the actual fear we might fail. Who knows? He’s totally right about the terror bit, at any rate. Haven’t had any pains before or since and you would not call me thin if you saw me now.
I’d give the book a 5 regardless, but I must dock it a point for doing an Alt-Edit-Find-Replace that ticked me off: 99% of all CEOs and all managers who are referred to in this book by their name are male. All their counterparts who are referred to in the abstract, on the other hand are referred to as “she.”
So go ahead, be a cynic / a hypocrite / a panderer / a wuss, but if you’re going to do it, do it right! Page 254 I found myself reading the following lines: “Every CEO sets out to hire the very best person in the world and then recruits aggressively to get HIM. If HE says yes, she inevitably thinks she’s hit the jackpot.” (the capitals are mine) Dunno, maybe it’s deliberate. Perhaps after 250 pages of “she” this and “she” that the author does feel compelled to concede that the very best person in the world is male, after all.
And there you have it.
Finally, if you want my one piece of advice for when you run a company (and I don’t have the success of Ben Horowitz to back me up, but I’ll say it anyway) I’ll sum it up in one word: delegate.
#Author's Explanatory Approach: The book provides a detailed account of the author's personal experiences in tackling the most challenging aspects of his work, shedding light on the hurdles he faced and conquered.
#Strategies for Success: The author shares his innovative techniques, including using lead shots to tackle issues head-on, offering valuable insights on effective problem-solving.
#CEO's Perspective: The book delves into the complexities of handling ventures and the demanding role of a CEO, providing a realistic portrayal of the difficulties involved.
#Embracing Challenges: The author intentionally chooses the hard path to accomplish tasks, highlighting the importance of embracing difficulties and pushing ourselves to achieve greatness.
#Thought-Provoking Read: Reading this book has a transformative effect, compelling us to embrace the difficult aspects of life and encouraging personal growth.
#Cautionary Note: The book urges readers to approach it with caution, as it may inadvertently push us to adopt a more challenging and rigorous approach to our endeavors.
The fate of tech companies, especially Mid and Small, is very uncertain. One phone call or an email can topple the company overnight. To avoid such a situation, we must not depend on one company.
Retaining projects, retaining key employees, etc., is always burdensome to a tech company. An executive might not know for what purpose he was hired. But the company does know it.
The author of this book, Ben Horwitz, is a management guru. We can trust his rules of running a tech business. I enjoyed reading it. Thank you for reading this review to this level.
CA Ram Pavan Kumar

















