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

by Ben Horowitz

Chapter 4: When Things Fall Apart The Struggle CEOs Should Tell It Like It Is The Right Way to Lay People Off Preparing to Fire an Executive Demoting

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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.

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

“Did you think I’d crumble? Did you think I’d lay down and die? Oh no, not I I will survive.” —GLORIA GAYNOR, “I WILL SURVIVE”

An early lesson I learned in my career was that whenever a large organization attempts to do anything, it always comes down to a single person who can delay the entire project.

Make no mistake, we have one bullet left in the gun and we must hit the target.”

“How can we walk away from requirements that we know to be true to pursue something

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It turns out that is exactly what product strategy is all about—figuring out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job.

requirements; I need you to reinvent the product and we need to win.” Nine months later, when we released our new product we could now win any deal. Armed with the new

“What am I not doing?”