The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Business and economics

First published: 2014
Print length: 289 pagesHarperBusiness, 2014

Description

Ben Horowitz presents a practical guide to the difficult realities of building and leading a startup when no obvious answer is available. Rather than promising a universal formula, the book focuses on problems that require judgment amid uncertainty, competing priorities, and imperfect options. Horowitz considers how leaders can keep making decisions when plans fail, pressure rises, and every available choice carries a cost. The emphasis is on confronting hard situations directly, learning from experience, and accepting that entrepreneurship cannot be reduced to tidy rules. Candid in tone and grounded in the demands of company building, the book is intended for founders and other startup leaders facing consequential decisions.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Conversational · Direct · Witty

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Earnest · Intimate · Irreverent · Reflective

Structure

Episodic

Focus

Ideas · Information · Voice

Emotional intensity

3 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 2 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 2 / 5
Background knowledge: 2 / 5

Themes

AmbitionMoralityPowerTransformationWork

About Ben Horowitz

Ben Horowitz is a technology entrepreneur, investor, and management writer whose books draw on experience as a software engineer, product executive, cofounder and CEO of Loudcloud/Opsware, and cofounder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He writes as an operator addressing other operators, using candid stories, humor, and hip-hop quotations to make difficult lessons memorable. The Hard Thing About Hard Things examines leadership decisions for which formulas offer little help, including personnel choices, executive strain, and whether to sell a company. What You Do Is Who You Are extends his attention to organizational culture, treating it as the pattern of decisions a company actually makes. Across both, Horowitz is chiefly interested in judgment under pressure and the consequences of management choices.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: HarperBusiness
Language: English
ISBN: 9780062273208

Keep your books and notes in Collected for iPhone.

Apple Books is a service mark of Apple Inc. iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.