The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz

The best management-related book I’ve read lately.

Ben Horowitz is currently known as the cofounder and partner of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. This book walks through Ben’s experience as a founder/CEO of his previous companies, Loudcloud and Opsware.

Ben describes in a lot of detail the difficult situations in which he and his companies ended up in, and though those stories he covers a lot of different management topics, including decision making, company scaling, interviewing and hiring executive team, designing communication structures, training & providing feedback, handling creativity vs. compliance paradox and many others. Book ends with telling an interesting story about the idea on which Andreessen Horowitz, aka “a16z”, has been founded.

Ben is a great storyteller, and this book reads more like a business novel than a management book. The language is clear and and book structure is logical. If some specific recommendation is made, Ben always explains it in more detail in the same chapter, usually providing some examples from his own experience.

The book also contains some useful definitions of good vs. poor organizations, good vs. bad product managers, peacetime/wartime CEOs and effective CEOs. A sample of interview questions for head of enterprise sales force is also provided to illustrate what kind of performance and skill level Ben is talking about when he’s talking about hiring.