The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

by Ben Horowitz

There are no shortcuts to knowledge, especially knowledge gained from personal experience. Following conventional wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all.

Colin Powell says that leadership is the ability to get someone to follow you even if only out of curiosity.

“We take care of the people, the products, and the profits—in that order.”

There are two kinds of cultures in this world: cultures where what you do matters and cultures where all that matters is who you are. You can be the former or you can suck.

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.

Embrace your weirdness, your background, your instinct. If the keys are not in there, they do not exist.