horowitz the hard thing about hard things

How could you not get that? How could you not understand that? He is a pole climber, and I was asking him about an executive who I had met, and he was like, oh yeah, Chuck comes by every once in a while and blows a little sunshine up my ass. Pretending that things are perfect isn’t actually very effective.Īnd it was my brother-in-law who pointed that out to me. And as CEO there are so many problems that you personally can solve, so getting the company to work on them is very important. And so pretending that things are perfect isn’t actually very effective.Īnd then it’s not effective in that people don’t believe you and then it’s also not effective in that you can’t get people to solve problems that you won’t admit you have. But in reality companies are what they are and nobody has ever worked anywhere where everything is perfect. It’s all about positivity, and your attitude determines your altitude and all that, and people had to feel good about it. I never forget it, because I used to try and be a positive leader. So one, it was something I learned a little bit as being CEO. Have you always been this honest and forthcoming or did it come out in the book?īen Horowitz: I would like to use that Drake quote, “I always tell the truth so I’m good in every hood spot.” Leena: One of the things that I found was super interesting about the book was how honest you were. Ben Horowitz’s new book on entrepreneurship and company building, The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building A Business When There Are No Easy Answers, is officially out, and it’s the polar opposite of many of the management books CEOs and founders are advised to read (you can read our review of the book here). We also sat down with Horowitz to talk about his inspiration, his honesty, what surprised him about writing the book and more.

Horowitz the hard thing about hard things