List Price: $29.99

Save: $9.50 (32%)

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime

FREE delivery: Thursday, March 4 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon. Details

Fastest delivery: Monday, March 1
Order within 13 hrs and 32 mins Details

In Stock.
As an alternative, the Kindle eBook is available now and can be read on any device with the free Kindle app. Want to listen? Try Audible.

Secure transaction

Ships from	Amazon.com
Sold by	Amazon.com

Details

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

FREE Shipping on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon or get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime

Used: Good | Details

Sold by Bay State Book Company

Fulfilled by Amazon

Share <Embed>

Other Sellers on Amazon

$19.99
+ Free Shipping

Sold by: Breeze Traders IR

$22.49
+ Free Shipping

Sold by: Fifty Third Street Books

$25.93
+ Free Shipping

Sold by: Wordery USA

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 6 images

Follow the Author

Ben Horowitz

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers Hardcover – March 4, 2014

by Ben Horowitz (Author)

2,924 ratings

Great on Kindle

Great Experience. Great Value.

Enjoy a great reading experience when you buy the Kindle edition of this book. Learn more about Great on Kindle, available in select categories.

View Kindle Edition

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 length

304 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Harper Business
Publication date

March 4, 2014
Dimensions

6 x 1.01 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

9780062273208
See all details

Frequently bought together

Total price: $59.96

Buy the selected items together

This item:The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz Hardcover $20.49
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25.00. Details
The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful… by Eric Ries Hardcover $14.50
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25.00. Details
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel Hardcover $24.97
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25.00. Details

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Peter Thiel
7,786
Hardcover
$24.97
Eric Ries
7,473
Hardcover
in Lean Management
$14.50
Andrew S. Grove
1,578
Paperback
$13.59
Ben Horowitz
632
Hardcover
$20.05
Jason Fried
2,944
Hardcover
$16.29
Brad Feld
327
Hardcover
$33.99

More items to explore

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Ben Horowitz
632
Hardcover
$20.05
Eric Ries
7,473
Hardcover
in Lean Management
$14.50
Marc Benioff
318
Hardcover
$16.18
Reid Hoffman
520
Hardcover
$19.59
Brad Feld
327
Hardcover
$33.99
Nir Eyal
2,936
Hardcover
$18.24

Special offers and product promotions

Amazon Business : For business-only pricing, quantity discounts and FREE Shipping. Register a free business account

Editorial Reviews

Review

“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)

Product details

ASIN : 0062273205
Publisher : Harper Business (March 4, 2014)
Language : English
Hardcover : 304 pages
ISBN-10 : 9780062273208
Item Weight : 1.01 pounds
Dimensions : 6 x 1.01 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,853 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3 in Venture Capital (Books)
- #6 in New Business Enterprises (Books)
- #27 in Business Decision Making

Customer Reviews:
2,924 ratings

Start reading The Hard Thing About Hard Things on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Customer reviews

5 star		78%
4 star		14%
3 star		5%
2 star		2%
1 star		1%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Daniel Howard

This book is not for you

Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2018

Verified Purchase

This is a book for CEOs of venture capital backed or public companies with 10+ employees. Unless this you are this CEO, this book will not be useful nor give you good advice; it will merely be interesting or a “what if” book.

It is probably even more narrow: CEOs of venture capital or public TECH companies IN THE SILICON VALLEY IN CALIFORNIA. The advice is very specific to Silicon Valley culture and a specific job in that culture. I’ve worked in Silicon Valley for 20+ years as an engineer and founded my own tech startup 2 years ago, yet this book still does not apply to me because I do not have the exact job described in this book.

That being said, the book made a lot sense, seemed to cover new ground (especially CEO psychology and emotions) and was a quick read. It’s a must-read for the 500 CEOs or so that it’s intended for. My one doubt is that “Is It Okay To Hire From Your Friend’s Company?” is probably illegal in California.

I got this book on the recommendation from Jumpcut Viral Academy and they should not have recommended it nor do I recommend that others read it. It’s simply not applicable nor useful to non-CEOs. But it’s easy to be star-struck by the author and inappropriately recommend this book as something that it is not. It’s an “already CEO” guide, not about self motivation, not about how to get promoted to CEO, not how to help your CEO, not how to be a VP, not how to network, not how to get funding, not how to start a business and on and on.

219 people found this helpful

Helpful

Wally Bock

Solid advice for start-ups and other leaders

Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2017

Verified Purchase

If you want to know why The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers is worth buying, here’s the money quote.

“Almost all management books focus on how to do things correctly, so you don’t screw up, these lessons provide insight into what you must do after you have screwed up.”

If you’re planning to start a company, whether it’s a high-tech company or the kinds of companies that I started and ran, read this book. If you’re going to be someone in charge of anything in any kind of a company, read this book.

If all you want are the big ideas, or Horowitz’ philosophy, you can get them from his blog and articles. You don’t need to buy this book. But if you want a handy advisor for that 3 AM moment when you’re thinking about firing someone you like, buy the book. Keep it handy. I’ve had those moments and I wish I’d had it.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things has a whole lot of information packed inside it. You can read it from cover to cover and get a lot of value. Or, you can think of it as a series of conversations with bosses and mentors. Horowitz had a lot of those. And his mentors included people like Andy Grove and Jim Barksdale.

The wisdom that he shares and credits to them, reminds me of the wisdom that I received from bosses and mentors and which I later shared with protégés. It’s real, it’s practical, and it will help. I think that the discussion of things like firing and laying people off are more than worth the price of the book by themselves. And they’re only a small part of what’s in The Hard Thing About Hard Things.

Here are a few quotes from the book to give you an idea of what you’re in for. You don’t have to be a CEO to use what’s here, even though Horowitz aims the book at CEOs. Substitute “leader” for “CEO” in most quotes and use the wisdom.

Quotes from The Hard Thing About Hard Things

“That’s the hard thing about hard things— there is no formula for dealing with them.”

“People always ask me, ‘What’s the secret to being a successful CEO?’ Sadly, there is no secret, but if there is one skill that stands out, it’s the ability to focus and make the best move when there are no good moves. It’s the moments where you feel most like hiding or dying that you can make the biggest difference as a CEO.”

“Don’t take it personally. The predicament that you are in is probably all your fault. You hired the people. You made the decisions. But you knew the job was dangerous when you took it. Everybody makes mistakes. Every CEO makes thousands of mistakes. Evaluating yourself and giving yourself an F doesn’t help.”

“One of the most important management lessons for a founder/ CEO is totally unintuitive. My single biggest personal improvement as CEO occurred on the day when I stopped being too positive.”

“Management purely by numbers is sort of like painting by numbers— it’s strictly for amateurs.”

“The first rule of organizational design is that all organizational designs are bad.”

“Embrace the struggle.”

There are plenty more in The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers.

93 people found this helpful

Helpful

Herve Lebret

There is no recipe but courage

Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2014

Verified Purchase

“Every time I read a management or self-help book, I find myself saying, “That’s fine, but that wasn’t really the hard thing about the situation.” The hard thing isn’t setting a big, hairy, audacious goal. The hard thing is laying people off when you miss the big goal. The hard thing isn’t hiring great people. The hard thing is when those “great people” develop a sense of entitlement and start demanding unreasonable things. The hard thing isn’t setting up an organizational chart. The hard thing is getting people to communicate within the organization that you just designed. The hard thing isn’t dreaming big. The hard thing is waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when the dream turns into a nightmare. The problem with these books is that they attempt to provide a recipe for challenges that have no recipes. There’s no recipe for really complicated, dynamic situations. There’s no recipe for building a high-tech company; there’s no recipe for making a series of hit songs; there’s no recipe for playing NFL quarterback; there’s no recipe for running for president; and there’s no recipe for motivating teams when your business has gone to crap. That’s the hard thing about hard things— there is no formula for dealing with them.” This is how Horowitz begins.

Horowitz gives advice to entrepreneurs. And it is not business school-like advice indeed. “People often ask me how we’ve managed to work efficiently across three companies over eighteen years. Most business relationships either become too tense to tolerate or not tense enough to be productive after a while. Either people challenge each other to the point where they don’t like each other or they become complacent about each other’s feedback and no longer benefit from the relationship. With Marc and me, even after eighteen years, he upsets me almost every day by finding something wrong with my thinking, and I do the same for hi. It works.”

I began my review by quoting the first page. I will quote here with his final page: “Hard things are hard because there are no easy answers or recipes. They are hard because your emotions are at odds with your logic. They are hard because you don’t know the answer and you cannot ask for help without showing weakness. When I first became a CEO, I genuinely thought that I was the only one struggling. Whenever I spoke to other CEOs, they all seemed like they had everything under control. Their businesses were always going “fantastic” and their experience was inevitably “amazing”. But as I watched my peers’ fantastic, amazing businesses go bankrupt and sell for cheap, I realized I was probably not the only one struggling.” […] “Embrace your weirdness, your background, your instinct. If the keys are not there, they do not exist.”

The book is not an easy read. So you may not enjoy the book if you do not need to apply it now. Still it is a great book.

71 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Sam Gerrans

Unreadable

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 7, 2019

Verified Purchase

I'll tell you now: I did not finish this book. I was so put off by what I did read of it, I dropped it in the trash next to the bench I was sitting on in the park and went home.

So perhaps it has some redeeming features, but I'm quite happy not knowing what they are.

The book seems to be a self-congratulatory lap of honour in which the author demonstrates that he is the most non-racist, inclusivistic, non-judgmental person who has ever lived. He bludgeons us through the taxonomies of his various sets of friends, almost all of whom have some claim or other to minorityship which he just *has* to mention, whilst systematically pick-axing his prose to death with the Cultural Marxist "she" when what he means is "he" (or – if you must – "they"). It's just irritating.

I have never met this man. But I have met enough people like him to know that I don't want to hear any more of what he has to say about himself.

I'm happy for him that he manages to fire his friends *and* sleep well at night. I'm happy for him that he loves himself so much he just had to write an entire book about what a fabulous fellow he is. The problem is that I simply don't feel that anyone who is as eager as he is to cram his credentials of conventionality down my throat by endorsing every single point of what happens to be Politically Correct this week can genuinely have any balls.

Ergo, he isn't a leader.

Ergo, this isn't what it claims to be: a book about leadership.

31 people found this helpful

Kilt_monster

It's alright, but there are better books, and potentially more relevant ones for you

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 14, 2018

Verified Purchase

I heard this book raved about and thought I'd give it a go. It's written by someone who achieved much in silicon valley and is interesting, but I found in the way a museum plaque is interesting - you read it, think 'mm that's interesting' but then move on, because it doesn't really change you. I just want to highlight why I'm not raving about it.

1 - Almost all the advice provided here is for C-Suite, or perhaps exclusively CEO. Corporate boardroom, shareholders, directors bonuses, right person for the right job... I found it fascinating to read about things like the personality qualities the author looks for or assumes in a CEO fit, but I feel for a lot of people this information will simply not be applicable to their day to day. Certainly there wasn't much I could draw into my day to day.

2- The books referred to throughout by the author, by the likes of Andy Grove and Peter Thiel, are in my opinion far more useful - more game-changing insights

Maybe it's just because I'm not a C-suite director or a business founder that I can't appreciate the value of the advice... certainly I appreciate the honesty of the author and their willingness to call out what they see as corporate BS, but I found myself putting it down at 50%, 70%, 80%, picking up later, forging on, and still not feeling I was getting much from the read.

38 people found this helpful

Alok Kejriwal

This book is Salvation

Reviewed in India on February 24, 2019

Verified Purchase

The Hard Thing about Hard Things is pure SALVATION.

Written by the well known Ben Horowitz (VC of FB, Airbnb, Pinterest, Twitter), this is Ben's narration as a HARDCORE entrepreneur.

What I LOVE about the book:

- There is no black or white in the world of startup entrepreneurship. It's always a shade of grey.

- The roller coaster ride of an entrepreneur & how SIMILAR it feels to all our journeys. This book is a GREAT leveller 🙂

- Profanity is a mindset. Ben narrates how he handles it (also mentioning its purpose)

- Co-Founder relationship management!

- The constant dread of shutting down / going bankrupt and how the single pointed agenda of SURVIVING pulled Ben and his Company through until stardom.

- When to use statistics and when to use calculus 🙂

- The incredible story of Go. (second time I read this)

- The CHALLENGES of 'getting big Co execs into small Cos"!

- NEVER 'overcompensating' employees

Immortal quotes:

"There were plenty of companies in the '90s that had launch parties but not landing parties" 🙂

"Play long enough ... so that you might get lucky"

MUST READ (once a year)

36 people found this helpful

Unknown

Peace to all those engaged in struggle to fulfill their dreams

Reviewed in India on November 4, 2018

Verified Purchase

Going through my own struggle to fulfill my dreams, I just picked up the book and read it. And as the author says hard things are hard, because there are no easy answers or recipes. It is an easy read, though can get boring in places, especially given it is also a management book. However, the author's stewardship Opsware is fascinating, its ups and downs, re-inventing itself, fighting and eventually selling it. For me the following are the important lessons:

1. I recently met an ex-colleague, whose founded and runs a business now valued over a couple of billion dollars. He like the author said that we just kept on going through tough times. As Winston Churchill also said, when in hell keep going. And as the author says, if you play long enough, you may get lucky.
2. Focus on exploiting your strengths more than in ensuring that there are no weaknesses
3. Sometimes the things that you are not doing should be the things that you should be doing.
4. Looking at worlds from different prisms, helps separate facts from perception or shall we say fiction.
5. In war time, just play to survive, kill and win i.e., know what needs to be done and focus on getting it done. Alignment of all with the strategy and tactics is very important.
6. If you are a thinker, get people who can get things done. My father used to say that most executive often knew how to get things done, however if they also knew what to do, then they would be more effective.
7. In business if you need to find an answer, you got to find it irrespective of odds of finding it.
8. Importance of training your people and integrating them. As i was old over a quarter of a century ago in an interview, you need to train your staff from day one.

There are of course other lessons too, like when should you sell your company, how should organisation culture be deigned, how should a founder deal with simple things like title or avoid the organisation becoming political, etc. I am sure, depending on where you are and what your challenges are, you will have a different take.

A good book to read for entreprenuers, for people charting their own courses. I give it my highest recommendation.

28 people found this helpful

Ajay

A brief rundown on how to deal with the hard things

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 11, 2016

Verified Purchase

The hard thing about hard things deals with the trials that Ben Horowitz encountered during his career as founder CEO to VC at Andreessen Horowitz. The book gives practical advice on how to grow a company, find the right executives, and deal with the hard decisions along the way.

The first half of the book mainly covers Horowitz's back story and it takes a while for anything of real value to be mentioned. By the halfway mark though the book offers plenty of bookmark-worthy snippets of advice which should be relevant to anyone who is looking to develop a career in leadership.

It's very likely I will be referring to this book again in the future.

8 people found this helpful

See all reviews