The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Most business books tell you what to do when things are going well. Ben Horowitz wrote the book about what to do when everything is falling apart. When you have to lay off a third of your company. When your biggest customer leaves. When your co-founder wants out. When you have to fire your best friend. Those are the hard things about hard things, and no other book addresses them with this level of honesty.

Horowitz co-founded Loudcloud/Opsware, nearly went bankrupt multiple times, and eventually sold to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion. Then he co-founded Andreessen Horowitz, one of the most influential venture capital firms in the world. The book is a distillation of every lesson he learned by nearly dying as a CEO — lessons you cannot learn from a professor or a consultant because they have never been in the arena.

The book's unique structure — mixing management philosophy with hip-hop lyrics and war stories — reflects Horowitz's personality. He is not trying to sound academic. He is trying to prepare you for the loneliest, most gut-wrenching moments of leadership. The chapter on demoting a loyal friend is alone worth the price of admission.