Ben Horowitz - The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

This is for Felicia, Sophia, Mariah, and the Boocher, mi familia , for putting up with me when I was learning all of this.One hundred percent of my portion of the proceeds of this book will go to help women in developing countries gain basic civil rights via the American Jewish World Service. They truly face the hard things.

CONTENTS

This the real world, homie, school finished

They done stole your dreams, you dunno who did it.

KANYE WEST, GORGEOUS

E very time I read a management or self-help book, I find myself saying, Thats fine, but that wasnt really the hard thing about the situation. The hard thing isnt setting a big, hairy, audacious goal. The hard thing is laying people off when you miss the big goal. The hard thing isnt hiring great people. The hard thing is when those great people develop a sense of entitlement and start demanding unreasonable things. The hard thing isnt setting up an organizational chart. The hard thing is getting people to communicate within the organization that you just designed. The hard thing isnt dreaming big. The hard thing is waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when the dream turns into a nightmare.

The problem with these books is that they attempt to provide a recipe for challenges that have no recipes. Theres no recipe for really complicated, dynamic situations. Theres no recipe for building a high-tech company; theres no recipe for leading a group of people out of trouble; theres no recipe for making a series of hit songs; theres no recipe for playing NFL quarterback; theres no recipe for running for president; and theres no recipe for motivating teams when your business has turned to crap. Thats the hard thing about hard thingsthere is no formula for dealing with them.

Nonetheless, there are many bits of advice and experience that can help with the hard things.

I do not attempt to present a formula in this book. Instead, I present my story and the difficulties that I have faced. As an entrepreneur, a CEO, and now as a venture capitalist, I still find these lessons usefulespecially as I work with a new generation of founder-CEOs. Building a company inevitably leads to tough times. Ive been there; Ive done that. Circumstances may differ, but the deeper patterns and the lessons keep resonating.

For the past several years, Ive encapsulated these lessons in a series of blog posts that have been read by millions of people. Many of those have reached out to me wanting to know the backstory to the lessons. This book tells that backstory for the first time and includes the related lessons from the blog. Ive also been inspired by many friends, advisers, and family members who have helped me throughout my career and also by hip-hop/rap music. Because hip-hop artists aspire to be both great and successful and see themselves as entrepreneurs, many of the themescompeting, making money, being misunderstoodprovide insight into the hard things. I share my experiences in the hope of providing clues and inspiration for others who find themselves in the struggle to build something out of nothing.

This here is all about

My wife, my kids, the life that I live

Through the night, I was his, it was right, but I did

My ups, and downs, my slips, my falls

My trials and tribulations, my heart, my balls.

DMX, WHO WE BE

T he other day I threw a big barbecue at my house and invited a hundred of my closest friends. These types of gatherings arent unusual. My brother-in-law, Cartheu, and I have been barbecuing for years, and my skills have earned me the nickname from my African American friends the Jackie Robinson of Barbecue. I crossed the color line.

At this particular barbecue, the conversation turned to the great rapper Nas. My friend Tristan Walker, a young African American entrepreneur, commented proudly that Nas was from his home project, Queensbridge, New Yorkone of the largest public housing projects in the United States. My seventy-three-year-old Jewish father interjected, Ive been to Queensbridge. Convinced that there was no way that my old, white father had been to Queensbridge, Tristan said, You must mean Queens . Queensbridge is actually a housing project in an extremely rough neighborhood. My father insisted: No, it was Queensbridge.

I pointed out to Tristan that my father grew up in Queens, so he couldnt possibly be confused. Then I asked, Dad, what were you doing in Queensbridge? He replied, I was passing out communist literature when I was eleven years old. I remember it well, because my mother got very upset that the Communist Party sent me into the projects. She thought it was too dangerous for a little kid.

My grandparents were actually card-carrying Communists. As an active member in the Communist Party, my grandfather Phil Horowitz lost his job as a schoolteacher during the McCarthy era. My father was a red-diaper baby and grew up indoctrinated in the philosophy of the left. In 1968, he moved our family west to Berkeley, California, and became editor of the famed New Left magazine Ramparts .

As a result, I grew up in the city affectionately known by its inhabitants as the Peoples Republic of Berkeley. As a young child, I was incredibly shy and terrified of adults. When my mother dropped me off at nursery school for the first time, I began to cry. The teacher told my mother to just leave, while reassuring her that crying was common among nursery school children. But when Elissa Horowitz returned three hours later, she found me soaking wet and still crying. The teacher explained that I hadnt stopped, and now my clothes were drenched as a result. I got kicked out of nursery school that day. If my mother hadnt been the most patient person in the world, I might never have gone to school. When everybody around her recommended psychiatric treatment, she was patient, willing to wait until I got comfortable with the world, no matter how long it took.

When I was five years old, we moved from a one-bedroom house on Glen Avenue, which had become far too small for a six-person family, to a larger one on Bonita Avenue. Bonita was middle-class Berkeley, which means something a bit different from what one finds in most middle-class neighborhoods. The block was a collection of hippies, crazy people, lower-class people working hard to move up, and upper-class people taking enough drugs to move down. One day, one of my older brother Jonathans friends, Roger (not his real name), was over at our house. Roger pointed to an African American kid down the block who was riding in a red wagon. Roger dared me: Go down the street, tell that kid to give you his wagon, and if he says anything, spit in his face and call him a nigger.

A few things require clarification here. First, we were in Berkeley, so that was not common language. In fact, I had never heard the word nigger before and didnt know what it meant, though I guessed it wasnt a compliment. Second, Roger wasnt racist and he wasnt raised in a bad home. His father was a Berkeley professor and both his parents were some of the nicest people in the world, but we later found out that Roger suffered from schizophrenia, and his dark side wanted to see a fight.

Rogers command put me in a difficult situation. I was terrified of Roger. I thought that he would surely give me a severe beating if I didnt follow his instructions. On the other hand, I was terrified of asking for the wagon. Hell, I was terrified of everything. I was much too scared of Roger to stay where I was, so I began walking down the block toward the other kid. The distance was probably thirty yards, but it felt like thirty miles. When I finally got there, I could barely move. I did not know what to say, so I just opened my mouth and started talking. Can I ride in your wagon? is what came out. Joel Clark Jr. said, Sure. When I turned to see what Roger would do, he was gone. Apparently, his light side had taken over and hed moved on to something else. Joel and I went on to play all day that day, and weve been best friends ever since. Eighteen years later, he would be the best man at my wedding.

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