Introduction
In “The hard thing about hard things” entrepreneur Ben Horowitz shares his experiences in the Silicon Valley start-up culture. Horowitz does not believe there is a recipe for building a high-tech company. The reader is presented with stories of the challenges high-tech startups face and how Horowitz as CEO repeatedly almost crashed his company. The book identifies some of main growing challenges Horowitz has encountered and advice on how to go about tackling these challenges.
About the author
Ben Horowitz started his career as an engineer. He worked for a couple of tech companies before joining Netscape as a product manager. He climbed the ranks at Netscape and eventually became friends with Marc Andreessen one of the founders.
In 1999 Horowitz and Andreessen together with Tim Hows started Loudcloud a server park management system. In 2002 Loudcloud became Opsware. In 2007 Opsware was sold to HP.
In 2009 Horowitz and Andreessen founded venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz.
Summary
The book starts off with some background on the writer up to the start of Loudcloud. The history of Loudcloud is next. Horowitz goes into the dealings with raising money and satisfying the needs of big corporate clients, the selling off of part of the company to Electronic Data Systems. Continuing the rest of the company under the new name Opsware and finally selling Opsware to Hewlett Packard for 1.65 billion dollars .
The struggle
Horowitz goes into the struggle he went through as Ceo. Trying to be a positive leader while the company is going through existential problems. Tell it like it is Horowitz advice.
Dealing with downscaling the workforce while trying to maintain moral amongst those who you keep on.
Getting rid of executives that don’t perform.
How he dealt with friends he had to demote.
The struggle
Horowitz goes into the struggle he went through as Ceo. Trying to be a positive leader while the company is going through existential problems. Tell it like it is Horowitz advice.
Dealing with downscaling the workforce while trying to maintain moral amongst those who you keep on.
Getting rid of executives that don’t perform.
How he dealt with friends he had to demote.
How to be a CEO
According to the write the job of CEO is not an easy one. The book as advice on how to manage your phycology as a CEO. How do plan succession. He touches on some theory about type one and type two managers and how to balance the manager type in an organization.
Bill Campbell has praised Horowitz for being both a good wartime and a good peacetime CEO. The books goes into the difference between the two.
The book closes with advice on when and how to sell you company.
Opinion
The book is written well. It has plenty of entertaining stories. The writer shares a lot of is wisdom on running a growing start up.
The wisdom shared may be of use to a small group of readers. Not every one is running a fast scaling, publicly trading startup, or something that is close to it.
The book covers a number of topics that are sparsely written about. A reader interested in Ben Horowitz might like to pick this book up since there is not yet a biography of the man.
Conclusion
The hard thing about hard things is a welcome addition to start up books. The writer does very well what he set out to do. If the subject matter interests you, you should definitely pick up this book.