Editor’s note: This article was first published in May 2014. It describes The Hard Thing About Hard Things as Horowitz’s “new book”, published in 2014.
Ben Horowitz’s new book was not written by a writer, an academic or a journalist, but by an entrepreneur, former CEO and successful venture capitalist. We have already written about Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, and his book The Hard Thing About Hard Things, in an article on the bitterest side of starting your own business according to this entrepreneur.
This time, Morgan Housel, a columnist at Fool.com, has picked out 10 business lessons from the book. They are the fruit of Horowitz’s long and intense business experience: he knows what it feels like to fail, to lay people off, to watch your company lose all its value, to lose sleep, to throw up and even, at times, to cry under the strain of running a company.
If you think starting your own business is going to be a bed of roses, being an entrepreneur is probably not for you. That is Horowitz’s main premise, and he knows what he is talking about.
The 10 business lessons Housel takes from the book
-
There are no shortcuts to knowledge, especially the knowledge that comes from personal experience. Following conventional wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all.
-
In my experience as a CEO, I have learned that the most important decisions an entrepreneur makes are more a test of courage than of intelligence.
-
Do you want to succeed as an entrepreneur and as a company? Take care of the people, the products and the profits, but you must do it in that order.
See also: There is always a way out; you just have to know how to find it
-
All the mental energy you spend dwelling on your misery would be far better spent trying to find a way out of the current mess. Spend 0% of your time on what you could have done and didn’t. Spend 100% of your time on what you can and will do, because in the end nobody cares. Just run your company.
-
People do not remember every day they worked for your company, but they will certainly remember the day they were laid off. They will remember every detail of that day, and the details matter a great deal. The reputation of your company and its managers will depend on you, standing in front of the employees who trusted you and worked hard for you.
-
Be in good company. It does not matter when things are going well, but it can make the difference between life and death for your company when things go badly.
– Things always go wrong at some point.
– Surrounding yourself with “good company” is an end in itself. -
Don’t play the odds. When you are building a company, you must look for the answer and find it. It does not matter if your odds are one in nine. Your job is exactly the same.
-
As an entrepreneur you should always look at the world through different lenses. That helped me separate facts from perception. This skill served me incredibly well later on, when I became an entrepreneur and CEO. I solved many problems by looking for explanations and solutions from perspectives radically different from my own point of view.
-
The situation you are in is probably all your fault. You hired the people; you made the decisions. But you knew the job was dangerous when you took it. Everyone makes mistakes, and every CEO makes hundreds of them. Beating yourself up over it will not help, but you need to be smart enough to know that the blame is yours alone.
-
You will live with the helplessness of knowing that sometimes the smartest employees can be the worst employees in your company, and that the odds of success as an entrepreneur are against you. But that is the path the entrepreneur chooses.
Further reading
- 18 business lessons you will learn sooner or later
- 10 wise business lessons from the best executive of the 20th century
- 11 Steve Jobs quotes that will go down in business history
Featured image: TechCrunch, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
