the hard thing about hard things by ben horowitz

His book The Hard Thing About Hard Things shares more lessons learned during that epic journey.

He was the co-founder and CEO of Opsware, which was sold to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007. For him the key is to focus on where you are going rather than on what you hope to avoid.īen Horowitz is the co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He says dwelling on the past and worrying about the future eat up your emotional resources. Finally, Ben encourages entrepreneurs to free up their emotional bandwidth. That way you can see it and get some perspective on the situation. He is all about getting your thoughts out of your head and onto paper. They will help you think through challenging situations and provide strength. The first is to build a trusted circle of friends where you can be open about your thoughts. 'The first rule of the CEO psychological meltdown is don't talk about the psychological meltdown.'īen says three tools help beat back the pressure. Ben says it's like the fight club of management. When times are tough they have to deal with unhappy investors, employees and clients. And as the venture scales, you can adjust, adapt and rework your teams.ĬEOs face tremendous pressure.

What you want to do is hire the right person for the right job at the right time. The problem is that these big names are often over-sized for the venture and end up squashing its potential as frustration sets in and eats up precious management energy. CEOs start picking up big name talent in the hopes that they will help the organization rise to the next level. Most of the time people are lured into what he calls the scale anticipation fallacy. Ben notes that one of the hardest things to do is get the right people at the right time for your scale. This is a major challenge since most entrepreneurs have zero experience with scaling something. This means that entrepreneurs need to figure out how to scale. Go big or go home is the prevailing culture in Silicon Valley. Growing Pains: Right People at the Right Time By being a great place to work, those who remain will understand the situation and stick by the CEOs side to forge ahead.ģ. When times are tough, you will have to lay-off people. Thirdly, make sure you are a great place to work. Secondly, at every single point of your venture's life, invest in training your team. First, hire for strengths versus lack of weakness. He says there are three lessons you can learn. And without a winning product,you will not generate profits. The impact of having the wrong people directly impacts your ability to create and deliver a product. Jim Barksdale, Ben's old boss, said 'We take care of the people, the products and the profits.in that order.' Ben says that many ventures pick the wrong people for the wrong positions for the wrong reasons.

The hard thing about hard things by ben horowitz