The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Being a good CEO means finding the best move when there are no good moves

For me, Ben Horowitz is best known as a founder of the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. In The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Horowitz shares what he learned both as a Product Manager at Netscape (where he met Marc Andreessen) and as a cofounder and CEO at LoudCloud/Opsware. The book focuses on advice for CEOs of fast-growing companies, the kind that Horowitz mentors and invests in at Andreessen Horowitz. That said there are lessons for any technical leader or person just looking to get a sense of the challenges facing a Silicon Valley startup in the early 2000s. I found the anecdotes engaging and interesting. Some of the advice was well-worn, but useful nonetheless. Here are some points that stood out to me:

• Take care of People, Products and Profits (in that order)
• Hire for strengths rather than lack of weaknesses
• The customer only knows what she thinks she wants based on her experience with the current product. The innovator can take into account everything that’s possible but often must go against what she knows to be true.
• According to Horowitz, the number one reason executives fail is by continuing to do their old job rather than moving on to their new job.
• The CEO is responsible for the story. This goes beyond quarterly or annual goals and gets to the hardcore question of “why”