My takeways from The Hard Things About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz

Spend zero time on what you could have done, and devote all of your time on what you might do.

      — Ben Horowitz

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My attempt to jot down the information that really stuck with me while reading this amazing book. A book that I would certainly recommend :))

1. Take care of People, Products and Profits (in that order )

2. Wartime CEO vs Peacetime CEO

   Wartime - think of the problem in hand, do everything you can to solve it.

   Peacetime - strategic long term thinking, etc.

3. Hiring

   Always hire based on strengths not less weaknesses, we want specialists who love their craft.

   Don’t bring in big company execs in small growing startup if they don’t know what its like to grow a startup.

4. Training

   Train your own employees, introduce them to the work culture, team culture, technical aspects, etc.

5. Work Culture

   Culture is important, people develop a self of belonging with that. Let it come naturally, stay true to yourself. Allow a bit of profanity?

   People will only work hard if they know and relate to the company goals and values.

6. Firing People

   Whenever people get promoted, you judge their performance on that role, not the previous role. A senior manager should always thrive to be at the top and be compared with the best senior managers even if they just got promoted recently.

   When the company gets bigger, make sure your executives are good enough for their roles. Being head of sales of a 100k revenue company is different than 100m company, if they are not good, simply let go.

   Be firm in your decision making, don’t give half assed answers, be direct and tell them why you are laying them off. However, let them lay off in their terms if possible, eg, resignation.

   Be honest with your team when doing layoffs or the people who you aren’t laying off might try to leave the company or lose their motivation to give everything.

7. Minimize Politics

   Have as less politics as possible in the company. Hire the people with the right type of ambition who put company before self-interest.

   Hire people who know the difference between self-growth and self-interest.

   Have a very clear criteria on evaluating performance so promotions are fair.

   Have your managers have weekly 1 on 1 with every teammate so everyone is upto date and on track on their projects.

8. Decision Making

   Don’t wait to know all the details, you will never know all the details. The CEO has to move fast and work with less details but still make good decisions. Get very good at that ( how though? )

9. Resolving Conflicts

   If there is a conflict, the best way to solve it is to have both the poeple in the same room and talk it out face to face. Another way is to swap out their jobs so they can both see other person’s POV.

10. Connections matter

    Get a great mentor helps a lot.

    Have a good network - it makes raising funds, getting customers and getting quality people for your company easier.

11. Psychology

    CEOs are lonely people in the sense that they have really less true friends.

    Try to make friends. Be social. It’s okay to breakdown because most of the time, things are going to be broken. Get back up and solve it.

12. There is no recipe for success

    The hard things about hard things is that they are hard, there is no step by step guide because not many people have done it, you just have to figure it out to be honest.

    Basically, never give up.