49 pages • 1 hour read
Ben HorowitzThe Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “When Things Fall Apart”
Horowitz recalls some negative advice he received when LoudCloud was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. All the people he trusted advised him to give up. He didn’t listen and believed he had to find another solution: “When you are building a company, you must believe there is an answer and you cannot pay attention to your odds of finding it. You just have to find it” (59). Here, Horowitz offers that a CEO’s attention shouldn’t be on how to avoid mistakes; rather, the focus should be on what to do after those mistakes have been made. Horowitz then offers a series of segments on surviving in the tech industry.
The Struggle
The Struggle is a time that comes to every company CEO. When things go wrong, leaders question their abilities and wonder where they went wrong. Horowitz says that The Struggle is inevitable. Some CEOs won’t survive it. Some strategies that might help include getting people on your team involved in problem-solving. Remember that the problems you face are complex, and there’s always an option open to you. If one is able to persist for long enough, circumstances may change and allow for a new solution.
