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on December 28, 2015
If you ask Ben (of Andreessen Horowitz) how well he slept when he was CEO of his company, he’d say: “I slept like a baby. I woke up every 2 hours and cried.” You get the point: running a company is hard. Very hard. This book gives a realistic view of the ups and downs of startups. It will teach you why hiring great product managers is essential, how to train and develop people and how to build a sustainable culture (hint: it has nothing to do with paid lunches, yoga classes or pilates at work). This book will make you feel normal again. I read it 3 times, last year alone.
on April 20, 2014
The easy thing about “The Hard Thing About Hard Things,” Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz’s book about “Building a business when there are no easy answers,” is reading it.
That’s because it’s funny, to-the-point, and way more well-informed by real-world experience than most books that give advice ever are.
Like 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.”
And, “Managers must lay off their own people. They cannot pass the task to HR or to a more sadistic peer.”
And, “The job of a big company executive is very different from the job of a small company executive…big company executives tend to be interrupt-driven. In contrast, when you are a startup, nothing happens unless you make it happen.”
But it’s not just catchy phrases and aphorisms that make the book something pretty much anybody who wants to build a company should read, it’s the experience that created them: Horowitz provides in brutal (and, for aspiring entrepreneurs, invaluable) detail the excruciating real-life experiences behind the advice, from his years as a Silicon Valley engineer and then as the CEO of a start-up with more near-death experiences than Keith Richards before its successful sale to HP.
Like how to fire people. What to say at the “all-hands” when you just had your first layoffs. What to tell an employee who asks if the company is being sold when it is being sold, but not yet. Why every company needs a “story,” and what makes a great company story (hint: see the letter Jeff Bezos wrote to Amazon shareholders in 1997.) When not to listen to your board. Even, literally, what questions a CEO should ask a prospect being considered for the key, all-important job in any start-up: head of sales.
I'm not a fan of “how-to” books, particularly those concerned with managing people, because they tend to be heavy on theory and light on reality, but the chapter emphatically titled “WHY YOU SHOULD TRAIN YOUR PEOPLE" proved the value of the author's experience because it explains the trap in which an engineer I know happens to find himself.
He is a software engineer for a start-up that was acquired by a large, fast-growing Silicon Valley company whose name rhymes with “Shalesforce.com.”
He is smart, highly motivated, eager to learn, and yet he is miserable at his job for precisely the reason Horowitz spells out as follows in “WHY YOU SHOULD TRAIN YOUR PEOPLE”:
“Often founders start companies with visions of elegant, beautiful product architectures that will solve so many of the nasty issues that they were forced to deal with in their previous jobs. Then, as their company becomes successful, they find that their beautiful product architecture has turned into a Frankenstein. How does this happen? As success drives the need to hire new engineers at a rapid rate, companies neglect to train the new engineers properly. As the engineers are assigned tasks, they figure out how to complete them as best they can. Often this means replicating existing facilities in the architecture, which leads to inconsistencies in the user experience, performance problems, and a general mess. And you thought training was expensive.”
That line is the exact truth. Just ask the engineer at Shalesforce.com. His managers—if they exist—ought to read this book.
In fact, anybody who wants to start a company, or work for a company, or build a company, or invest in a company, ought to read this book, because that’s not the only hard-learned truth in here.
Some others include:
“In high-tech companies, fraud generally starts in sales due to managers attempting to perfect the ultimate local optimization [i.e. optimize their own incentive pay].”
“The Law of Crappy People states: For any title level in a large organization, the talent on that level will eventually converge to the crappiest person with the title.”
“The world is full of bankrupt companies with world-class cultures. Culture does not make a company…. Perks are good, but they are not culture.”
“Nobody comes out of the womb knowing how to manage a thousand people. Everybody learns at some point.”
“The first rule of the CEO psychological meltdown is don’t talk about the psychological meltdown.”
And maybe the best of all, because it encapsulates so much of what the book is about: “Tip to aspiring entrepreneurs: If you don’t like choosing between horrible and cataclysmic, don’t become CEO.”
This book, on the other hand, is a choice between good and great, so read it.
Jeff Matthews
Author “Secrets in Plain Sight: Business and Investing Secrets of Warren Buffett”
(eBooks on Investing, 2013) $4.99 Kindle Version at Amazon.com
That’s because it’s funny, to-the-point, and way more well-informed by real-world experience than most books that give advice ever are.
Like 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.”
And, “Managers must lay off their own people. They cannot pass the task to HR or to a more sadistic peer.”
And, “The job of a big company executive is very different from the job of a small company executive…big company executives tend to be interrupt-driven. In contrast, when you are a startup, nothing happens unless you make it happen.”
But it’s not just catchy phrases and aphorisms that make the book something pretty much anybody who wants to build a company should read, it’s the experience that created them: Horowitz provides in brutal (and, for aspiring entrepreneurs, invaluable) detail the excruciating real-life experiences behind the advice, from his years as a Silicon Valley engineer and then as the CEO of a start-up with more near-death experiences than Keith Richards before its successful sale to HP.
Like how to fire people. What to say at the “all-hands” when you just had your first layoffs. What to tell an employee who asks if the company is being sold when it is being sold, but not yet. Why every company needs a “story,” and what makes a great company story (hint: see the letter Jeff Bezos wrote to Amazon shareholders in 1997.) When not to listen to your board. Even, literally, what questions a CEO should ask a prospect being considered for the key, all-important job in any start-up: head of sales.
I'm not a fan of “how-to” books, particularly those concerned with managing people, because they tend to be heavy on theory and light on reality, but the chapter emphatically titled “WHY YOU SHOULD TRAIN YOUR PEOPLE" proved the value of the author's experience because it explains the trap in which an engineer I know happens to find himself.
He is a software engineer for a start-up that was acquired by a large, fast-growing Silicon Valley company whose name rhymes with “Shalesforce.com.”
He is smart, highly motivated, eager to learn, and yet he is miserable at his job for precisely the reason Horowitz spells out as follows in “WHY YOU SHOULD TRAIN YOUR PEOPLE”:
“Often founders start companies with visions of elegant, beautiful product architectures that will solve so many of the nasty issues that they were forced to deal with in their previous jobs. Then, as their company becomes successful, they find that their beautiful product architecture has turned into a Frankenstein. How does this happen? As success drives the need to hire new engineers at a rapid rate, companies neglect to train the new engineers properly. As the engineers are assigned tasks, they figure out how to complete them as best they can. Often this means replicating existing facilities in the architecture, which leads to inconsistencies in the user experience, performance problems, and a general mess. And you thought training was expensive.”
That line is the exact truth. Just ask the engineer at Shalesforce.com. His managers—if they exist—ought to read this book.
In fact, anybody who wants to start a company, or work for a company, or build a company, or invest in a company, ought to read this book, because that’s not the only hard-learned truth in here.
Some others include:
“In high-tech companies, fraud generally starts in sales due to managers attempting to perfect the ultimate local optimization [i.e. optimize their own incentive pay].”
“The Law of Crappy People states: For any title level in a large organization, the talent on that level will eventually converge to the crappiest person with the title.”
“The world is full of bankrupt companies with world-class cultures. Culture does not make a company…. Perks are good, but they are not culture.”
“Nobody comes out of the womb knowing how to manage a thousand people. Everybody learns at some point.”
“The first rule of the CEO psychological meltdown is don’t talk about the psychological meltdown.”
And maybe the best of all, because it encapsulates so much of what the book is about: “Tip to aspiring entrepreneurs: If you don’t like choosing between horrible and cataclysmic, don’t become CEO.”
This book, on the other hand, is a choice between good and great, so read it.
Jeff Matthews
Author “Secrets in Plain Sight: Business and Investing Secrets of Warren Buffett”
(eBooks on Investing, 2013) $4.99 Kindle Version at Amazon.com
on May 14, 2014
The life that Ben describes in his book is nothing short of an action packed professional career as CEO. The description of the challenges that he faced in his day to day operations as CEO was scary. Just boils down to the fact that how hard a blow can you take and still keep going.
This book is not for the faint hearted for sure, and not everybody will be able to relate to it. Most of the things didn't make sense to me because I haven't been in those kind of situations in my life that Ben (and perhaps every CEO) has been through. Although Ben has repeatedly emphasized that there are no readymade answers to difficult problems that one faces in her professional career, he has pretty much laid out the blueprint for dealing with the typical challenges.
I am sure it will strike a chord with everyone who is an aspiring CEO or somebody who is already going through the grind. I think the book will stay in my bookshelf until life throws me in to "CEO situation" and then I will surely come back to pick the nuggets of wisdom lying all around in this book.
This book is not for the faint hearted for sure, and not everybody will be able to relate to it. Most of the things didn't make sense to me because I haven't been in those kind of situations in my life that Ben (and perhaps every CEO) has been through. Although Ben has repeatedly emphasized that there are no readymade answers to difficult problems that one faces in her professional career, he has pretty much laid out the blueprint for dealing with the typical challenges.
I am sure it will strike a chord with everyone who is an aspiring CEO or somebody who is already going through the grind. I think the book will stay in my bookshelf until life throws me in to "CEO situation" and then I will surely come back to pick the nuggets of wisdom lying all around in this book.
on June 13, 2016
This book is fire. It's not about how to do things write. It's about what to do when things go wrong. And of course, in the words of Horowitz himself, "things always go wrong". I think my favorite takeaway from the book is when Horowitz talks about The Struggle. The Struggle on the path to greatness that every entrepreneur encounters. The quote from the book that echoes through my head again and again is: "The Struggle is not failure. But it can cause failure. Especially if you are weak. Always if you are weak." Horowitz wastes no time being very upfront about what it takes to win in a competitive entrepreneurial environment.
I highly recommend this book.
I highly recommend this book.
on April 12, 2017
Far better than the average business / mgmt book, where most of the time I'm reading things I've heard before. Not here. Highly recommended for anyone trying to start, build, grow, sustain, save, or transfer a business at the CEO level. There are many excellent business ideas and experiences here that, I'll bet, you've never considered. If I taught an MBA course on the CEO suite, this would be among the required reading.
on March 25, 2017
Great book. In the VC biz and ready a number but really find this distinguishing;y insightful...from the ops side to the deal side without self aggrandizing embellishment. If fact, Horowitz has a straight forward style that, if anything, is self deprecating. definitely a great read whether you're an entrepreneur, want to be one or want to read an quasi memoire.
on December 6, 2015
Excellent read, and Horowitz' credentials allow him to be very direct at times. His experience gives his advice a lot of weight.
There is a very real battle for the heart and mind of management science. The classical old guard (let's call it the Jack Welch school) stands in one corner, and the progressive Millennial-friendly vanguard (Gary Hamel school) stands in the other.
Horowitz squares this by his notion of peacetime vs wartime CEO. He comes clean by saying he's been primarily a wartime CEO, and his advice while level-headed is much more biased towards the wartime CEO.
I think he's right, and different times require different comportment. However, the millennials are hungry and desperate, and the management literature is far too anemic when it comes to how this management style should look like.
For MBA fresh grads reading this: please proceed with caution. It is never OK to yell at anyone and by all means it is not recommended to use profanity just because the company is under stress.
There is a very real battle for the heart and mind of management science. The classical old guard (let's call it the Jack Welch school) stands in one corner, and the progressive Millennial-friendly vanguard (Gary Hamel school) stands in the other.
Horowitz squares this by his notion of peacetime vs wartime CEO. He comes clean by saying he's been primarily a wartime CEO, and his advice while level-headed is much more biased towards the wartime CEO.
I think he's right, and different times require different comportment. However, the millennials are hungry and desperate, and the management literature is far too anemic when it comes to how this management style should look like.
For MBA fresh grads reading this: please proceed with caution. It is never OK to yell at anyone and by all means it is not recommended to use profanity just because the company is under stress.
on March 30, 2015
As a startup founder, I'm experiencing situation after situation that is made easier having read this book. Running a startup isn't glamorous. It's a really tough slog and this book does not mince words. Most business books by luminaries of the caliber of Ben Horowitz are just so much literary masturbation, filled with glittering generalities and advice far removed from the trenches of actually building a business. Not so much with The Hard Thing About Hard Things. This is deep, gritty, relevant stuff straight from the trenches of building an eventually successful technology startup in quite possibly the worst-ever economic environment for technology startups.
We're just getting started, and this book has already been exceedingly helpful. Reading The Hard Thing About Hard Things is a little scary as a founder, because you'll learn a lot about what can go wrong--and indeed, very much can go wrong. It certainly has for us (along with a lot of things going right, and of course, we hope what we got right is ultimately the most important part). It should be considered essential reading for any startup founder, whether this is your first or your fifteenth venture.
We're just getting started, and this book has already been exceedingly helpful. Reading The Hard Thing About Hard Things is a little scary as a founder, because you'll learn a lot about what can go wrong--and indeed, very much can go wrong. It certainly has for us (along with a lot of things going right, and of course, we hope what we got right is ultimately the most important part). It should be considered essential reading for any startup founder, whether this is your first or your fifteenth venture.
on May 19, 2014
“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.
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.
