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

by Ben Horowitz (Author)

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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.

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*Starred Review* It’s fairly evident that this is a collection of blogs, loosely strung together, united in their varied perspectives on start-ups, CEO-dom, and business in general. Though Horowitz is a cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and his credentials reside mainly in Silicon Valley, he’s imparted some valuable insight on hard lessons learned that apply to any manager, whether in the executive suite or not. As with most experiential books, it is all about him—but it’s written in such an engaging and universally acceptable manner that no one could object. Leave aside his background, for the moment. Who would realize, for instance, that executives worry about things like initiating layoffs, hiring the right people, training, and minimizing politics, among others? It’s a refreshingly honest take, and his colorful (and, yes, profanity-laced) language breaks down any other misperceptions about the role and the person. Plus, his imagination is compelling, such as the comparisons between peacetime and wartime CEOs: Peacetime CEO always has a contingency plan. Wartime CEO knows that sometimes you gotta roll a hard six. After all, the success equation is easy: the hard thing is getting it done. --Barbara Jacobs

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)

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Product details

Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: HarperBusiness (March 4, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0062273205
ISBN-13: 978-0547265452
Product Dimensions: 6 x 1 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 988 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,541 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5 in Books > Business & Money > Small Business & Entrepreneurship > New Business Enterprises
- #25 in Books > Business & Money > Skills > Decision Making
- #25 in Books > Business & Money > Management & Leadership > Decision-Making & Problem Solving

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Solid advice for start-ups and other leaders

January 24, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified 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.

47 people found this helpful

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There is no recipe but courage

May 19, 2014

Format: HardcoverVerified 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.

22 people found this helpful

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This book is not for you

August 29, 2018

Format: HardcoverVerified 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.

3 people found this helpful

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