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

by Ben Horowitz

pressing issues, brilliant ideas, and chronic frustrations

that do not fit neatly into status reports, email, and other less personal and

A good practice is to have the employee send you the agenda in advance.

If we could improve in any way, how would we do it?

What’s the number-one problem with our organization?

What’s not fun about working here?

Who is really kicking ass in the company?

If you were me, what changes would you make?

What don’t you like about the product?

rabid

focus on what I needed to get right and stop worrying about all the things that I did wrong or might

do wrong.

“We’re Fucked, It’s Over”

CEO is an unnatural job.” The surprised look on his face

made me realize that perhaps

wasn’t as obvious as I’d origina...

As already noted, courage is particularly important,

because every decision that a CEO makes is based on incomplete information. At the

byzantine,

I encountered a particularly tricky management situation.

“The Scale Anticipation Fallacy,” it’s neither necessary nor a good idea to evaluate an executive based on what her job will be two years from now.

subsumed

Did everybody have the same problems I’d had? If they did, why didn’t anybody write anything down? Why did so few startup advisers and

venture capitalists have any experience starting companies?

As these thoughts rolled around in my head, I sen...

ought to start a venture ca...

The best entrepreneurs will only work with the best venture

was incredibly difficult for technical

founders to learn to become CEOs while building their companies.

Managing executives, organizational design, running sales organizations

and the like were all important skills that technical founders lacked.

Professional CEOs knew

lots of executives, potential customers and partners, people in the press, investors, and other important business connections. Technical founders, on the other

CEO through classroom training would be like learning to be an NFL quarterback through

After eight years of running Loudcloud and Opsware, I had learned so many hard lessons that

building the team was easy. I understood the importance of hiring for strength rather than for lack of weakness, and

I needed people who were great where I needed greatness.

running things, strategy, and deals.

Unrelenting confidence was necessary.

Hard things are hard because there are no

easy answers or recipes.

They are hard because your emotions are at...

l...

They are hard because you don’t know ...

cannot ask for help without showi...

Embrace the struggle.

Embrace your weirdness, your background, your instinct.