The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Welcome to my The Hard Thing About Hard Things book summary!

One-Sentence-Summary: The founder of the famous investing firm, Andresen Horowitz, wrote his first book for entrepeneurs interested in building, growing, or leading a great company.

booboo real-time book rating: ★★★★☆ (percentage of books with this rating: 34%)

This blog will contain both my summary and review of the book The Hard Thing About Hard Things.

One of the most difficult part of managing is when to hold people accountable. Here is Horowitz suggestion:

1. You should expect experienced employee’s to be better able to forecast their results more accurately.
2. How difficult was the objective? Some things are simply harder.
3. Consider whether the risks were stupid (there is such a thing) or didn’t pan out. There is no reward without risk, but there is such a thing as taking a lot of risk without a reward (the example given is drunk driving: much risk, but no reward is successful)

There is an interesting section about why it’s not a good idea for an employer (of a larger company) to match an employee’s offer from a different company. In summary, the secret will get out, and all the employees will understand the best way to get a raise.

While interviewing, notice whether the interview views the world through a ‘me’ prism or a ‘team’ prism. Someone who has a team perspective rarely uses I or me, even when describing personal accomplishments.

You are reading my book review and summary by Ben Horowitz. Be sure to check out my digital bookshelf for 100+ book summaries.

Did you know I’m an author? I wrote four books on real estate investing, travel, and language learning.

Best Quotes from The Hard Thing About Hard Things

• If you don’t know what you want, you will be unlikely to get it. (p. 74)

Thanks for visiting and thanks to Ben Horowitz for writing The Hard Thing About Hard Things!