The Hard Thing about Hard Thing: Building a Business When There are No Easy Answers

The Hard Thing about Hard Thing: Building a Business When There are No Easy Answers – Honest Review

Brand:
ASIN: 0062273205
Category: Books > Business & Economics > Business Development & Entrepreneurship > Starting a Business
Rating: 4.5 ★

Price: ₹799 - ₹488.00
(as of Jun 19, 2025 23:20:26 UTC –
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Product Overview

Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley;s most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, offers essential advice on building and running a startup—practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn’t cover, based on his popular ben’s blog.While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. Ben Horowitz analyzes the problems that confront leaders every day, sharing the insights he’s gained developing, managing, selling, buying, investing in, and supervising technology companies. A lifelong rap fanatic, he amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs, telling it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in.Filled with his trademark humor and straight talk, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz;s personal and often humbling experiences.

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Customer Reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars 14,759

4.5 out of 5 stars 1,837

Price

₹488.00₹488.00 ₹259.00₹259.00

Filled with his trade mark humor and straight talk, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz’s personal and often humbling experiences. Who you are is not the values you list on the wall. It’s not what you say in company-wide meeting. It’s not your marketing campaign. It’s not even what you believe. Who you are is what you do.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Business (8 June 2014); HarperCollins Publishers; enquiries@harpercollins.ie
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0062273205
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0062273208
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 294 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.24 x 2.57 x 22.86 cm
Net Quantity ‏ : ‎ 1.00 count
Generic Name ‏ : ‎ BOOK

Key Highlights

• Manufacturer:
  

  

  

  	The Hard Thing about Hard Thing: Building a Business When There are No Easy A…	What You Do Is Who You Are
  	Add to Cart	Add to Cart
  Customer Reviews	4.6 out of 5 stars 14,759	4.5 out of 5 stars 1,837
  Price	₹488.00₹488.00	₹259.00₹259.00
  	Filled with his trade mark humor and straight talk, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz’s personal and often humbling experiences.	Who you are is not the values you list on the wall. It’s not what you say in company-wide meeting. It’s not your marketing campaign. It’s not even what you believe. Who you are is what you do.

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• Type: self care essentials

Review Summary

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Pros:

1. ✔️ Easy to use, beginner-friendly
2. ✔️ Trusted brand with great user reviews

Cons:

1. ❌ May lack advanced features for professionals
2. ❌ Availability might vary by location

What Customers Say

Reviewer: Ritesh s.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Business Management
Review: Best book For those who need to learn business management
Reviewer: Rahul Jujjavarapu
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Worth Read!
Review: It’s a worth read to know experiences of the journey from the roots of Communism to VC. Many jewels to pick up from the life to live.
Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: “Navigating Challenges: Insights and Inspiration from ‘The Hard Things About Hard Things’
Review: #”The Hard Things About Hard Things”: A Fascinating Insight into Overcoming Challenges#Author’s Explanatory Approach: The book provides a detailed account of the author’s personal experiences in tackling the most challenging aspects of his work, shedding light on the hurdles he faced and conquered.#Strategies for Success: The author shares his innovative techniques, including using lead shots to tackle issues head-on, offering valuable insights on effective problem-solving.#CEO’s Perspective: The book delves into the complexities of handling ventures and the demanding role of a CEO, providing a realistic portrayal of the difficulties involved.#Embracing Challenges: The author intentionally chooses the hard path to accomplish tasks, highlighting the importance of embracing difficulties and pushing ourselves to achieve greatness.#Thought-Provoking Read: Reading this book has a transformative effect, compelling us to embrace the difficult aspects of life and encouraging personal growth.#Cautionary Note: The book urges readers to approach it with caution, as it may inadvertently push us to adopt a more challenging and rigorous approach to our endeavors.
Reviewer: Rajashri
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Good quality , good condition, best page quality ever seen
Review: This Book was purchase by uread book store,( seller )Great book , l love this book because it talks about hard part of business about which no one talk…..Purchase this book if you are interested in building a great business…
Reviewer: Kumar Venkateshwar
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Great book
Review: Insight into challenges and gives some guidelines on potential approaches.
Reviewer: Vaibhav
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Good book
Review: Recommended by ritesh agarwal founder of oyo definitely a great read title of the book says it all one should expect before reading
Reviewer: CA Ram Pavan Kumar
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Tech Start-up entrepreneurs must read it
Review: This book is very empirical in its approach. It serves as a guide to the people at the helm of affairs of an organization, especially a tech company. It also serves as a guide to start-ups. Moreover, it’s a concise manual on operations, HR, funding, hiring, firing, M&A, etc.The fate of tech companies, especially Mid and Small, is very uncertain. One phone call or an email can topple the company overnight. To avoid such a situation, we must not depend on one company.Retaining projects, retaining key employees, etc., is always burdensome to a tech company. An executive might not know for what purpose he was hired. But the company does know it.The author of this book, Ben Horwitz, is a management guru. We can trust his rules of running a tech business. I enjoyed reading it. Thank you for reading this review to this level.CA Ram Pavan Kumar
Reviewer: Unknown
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Peace to all those engaged in struggle to fulfill their dreams
Review: Going through my own struggle to fulfill my dreams, I just picked up the book and read it. And as the author says hard things are hard, because there are no easy answers or recipes. It is an easy read, though can get boring in places, especially given it is also a management book. However, the author’s stewardship Opsware is fascinating, its ups and downs, re-inventing itself, fighting and eventually selling it. For me the following are the important lessons:1. I recently met an ex-colleague, whose founded and runs a business now valued over a couple of billion dollars. He like the author said that we just kept on going through tough times. As Winston Churchill also said, when in hell keep going. And as the author says, if you play long enough, you may get lucky.2. Focus on exploiting your strengths more than in ensuring that there are no weaknesses3. Sometimes the things that you are not doing should be the things that you should be doing.4. Looking at worlds from different prisms, helps separate facts from perception or shall we say fiction.5. In war time, just play to survive, kill and win i.e., know what needs to be done and focus on getting it done. Alignment of all with the strategy and tactics is very important.6. If you are a thinker, get people who can get things done. My father used to say that most executive often knew how to get things done, however if they also knew what to do, then they would be more effective.7. In business if you need to find an answer, you got to find it irrespective of odds of finding it.8. Importance of training your people and integrating them. As i was old over a quarter of a century ago in an interview, you need to train your staff from day one.There are of course other lessons too, like when should you sell your company, how should organisation culture be deigned, how should a founder deal with simple things like title or avoid the organisation becoming political, etc. I am sure, depending on where you are and what your challenges are, you will have a different take.A good book to read for entreprenuers, for people charting their own courses. I give it my highest recommendation.
Reviewer: LolaMacIsaac
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I’m rich now. Rich as a prince and I regret nothing. As I sit here idly sipping a mojito while my handsome Swedish masseuse gently massages my well tanned shoulders, I find it hard to contemplate a life before I read The Hard Thing About Hard Things. At first I was quite taken with the title. Something has always appealed to me about hard things, but as I stroke the long stem of my glass nothing specific comes to mind.Oh I kid- this is a book written by rich people for rich people. As such, it probably has some great advice than someone with capital and money could put to good use. But it is not for a brand new entrepreneur. It was a recommendation from an Angel Investor in India. I can only assume he misunderstood his audience. Anyway, read it if you are rich and you want to get richer. Find something else if you are poor and want to get richer.But, for what it is, it is a good read- well written, solid advice if you can afford to take it. Even though reading it was a complete waste of my time I am sure that the crowd with capital out there might find it rewarding. I give it five stars, because for what it is, it is very good.
Reviewer: I Waring
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I received the book on my iPad Mini Kindle App the day of release and read through it in two (very long!) sittings.The impression reading the book is that being the CEO both LoudCloud and Opsware was quite a job. It sounded like someone running over a field chasing a tractor trailer with tons of cash accelerating away, but pursued at the same time relentlessly by a Combine Harvester. And then finding a lot of running track between the two was littered with tripwire and sinking sand. In both cases, Ben made it to the tractor trailer – just – despite enormous challenges. Very impressive.I can relate to the story of folks visiting him where two co-founders wanted to share all the decision making in their proposed business. The one thing I learnt indelibly from my own “Leadership and Followership” Management Training at Sandhurst was, that in any team setting, however ad-hoc, job #1 was picking one leader that everyone would defer to. So, while we were free to propose any action, the ultimate call was from that one person. And once they’d made that call, it was our job as a team to execute the decision made to the very best of our mutual ability.There is a lot of truth in Business Books talking about “Peace Time” CEOs (which get written about all the time) and “War Time” CEOs (which rarely get mentioned). This book carried the first acknowledgement of the phenomenon i’ve seen outside the excellent writings of Simon Wardley (just wish his knowledge finally made it into book form). This will become key, as the world of Enterprise IT is going to descend into war type conditions for many vendors by this side of 2017.The other thing that struck a cord was his coverage of hiring “older” folks to positions in a company. I went for 6 months trying to get interviews at the young age of 55, something that proved virtually impossible – this despite a long, successful track record of running large Software and Internet operations for Market Leading companies and always delivering my numbers. And of developing my employees, many of whom became regarded as “fast track talent”. He gives some excellent pros and cons for Managers in the text.Ben reminds people that the chief advantage is “time”; while some tasks like engineering can be internally focussed, that there are several things that relationship networks and business building skills in an older candidate can deliver that truly make a difference between success and liquidation. So while HR and Management ageism is endemic (and it’s not controversial in any way to suggest that – it is a fact of life), it’s our job to point out areas where we can help any organisation.In the meantime, Ben Horowitz has written a fantastic book. Lots to learn from. Very recommended.
Reviewer: E C
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Independientemente de ser el fundador y CEO de tu propia empresa, grande o pequeña, como emprendes desde hace poco o te planteas hacerlo, este libro es de lectura obligatoria. Ben empieza el libro contando su historia de manera muy amena y dejándo ver que todo lo que enseña y aconseja es fruto de haberse encontrado con los problemas, haberlos aprontado y haberlos superado, y sigue explicando, de manera metódica, cómo actuar ante los dilemas que suponen ciertas situaciones más o menos habituales pero que desde luego quien apunta alto se encontrará.Ben incluso cita a otros autores y libros que lo guiaron en su andadura y que deberían ser también lectura obligatoria para cualquier emprendedor, y que serán mis próximas lecturas tan pronto termine de releer este libro.
Reviewer: Yoann Buzenet
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Une tonne de conseils précis par un homme qui a géré une licorne avant, pendant et après les années folles de la bulle. Beaucoup de conseils et une analyse pertinente des challenges inhérents à la gestion d’entreprise. Plein d’ambition et de courage. Egalement, pas mal d’anecdotes et d’histoires, qui permettent de découvrir qui est le co-fondateur d’Andressen Horrowitz.Un régal.
Reviewer: Joey Curts
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: A worthwhile read for any aspiring entrepreneur, founder or executive in a start up. Interesting and candid history of Ben’s own companies, he gives valuable insights that will surely help you on your own journey. It’s also a short read for those who don’t have a lot of time to spare.

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