"Take care of the people, the products, and the profits — in that order."
Ben Horowitz is co-founder and general partner of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and previously co-founded and ran Opsware, acquired by HP for $1.6 billion. Drawing on his own harrowing experience running a startup through near-collapse, he wrote The Hard Thing About Hard Things as an unusually candid guide to the parts of leadership most books skip.
Our in-depth summaries and reviews of his work
Ben Horowitz's brutally honest guide to leading through crisis — covering The Struggle, peacetime vs wartime CEO, firing with dignity, and managing…
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Deep summary & review of The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. Key frameworks including Wartime vs Peacetime CEO, The…
Read Summary →Every founder faces 'the Struggle' — the period when the company might die and there's no obvious playbook. Horowitz argues the only way through is to keep making decisions with incomplete information, one day at a time.
Different situations call for different leadership styles: expansive, consensus-building 'peacetime' management when things are going well, versus decisive, rule-breaking 'wartime' leadership when the company's survival is at stake.
Take care of your people first, your products second, and profits will follow. Get the order backwards and all three eventually suffer.
"No matter who you are, you need two kinds of friends in your life. The first kind is one you can call when something good happens, and you need someone who will be excited for you."— The Hard Thing About Hard Things
"Note to self: It's a good idea to ask, 'What am I not doing?'"— The Hard Thing About Hard Things
"Build a culture that rewards — not punishes — people for getting problems into the open where they can be solved."— The Hard Thing About Hard Things
"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."— The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Ben Horowitz's brutally honest guide to leading through crisis — covering The Struggle, peacetime vs wartime CEO, firing with dignity, and managing your own psychology.
Deep summary & review of The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. Key frameworks including Wartime vs Peacetime CEO, The Struggle, and practical leadership tactics with a 7-day application plan.
