YullianeHann

In The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers, author Ben Horowitz focuses on the common problems that inevitably arise when running a business—after its opening and setting of initial goals. Although these problems are widespread and CEOs continually face them, there is no formula for solving them. CEOs will need courage to endure the struggle and make difficult and sometimes unpopular choices.

The other day I threw a big barbecue at my house and invited a hundred of my closest friends. These types of gatherings aren’t 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.


Chapter 1: From Communist to Venture Capitalist

Coming off the success of Netscape, Marc knew all the top venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, so we needed no introductions. Unfortunately for us, Kleiner Perkins, the firm that backed Netscape, had already funded a potentially competitive company. We spoke to all the other top-tier firms and decided to go with Andy Rachleff of Benchmark Capital.


Chapter 2 : "I Will Survive"

Once the EDS sale was completed, I felt like the company was in good shape, but my shareholders did not agree. I had sold all of my customers, all of my revenue, and the business they understood. Every large shareholder bailed out, and the stock price fell to $0.35 per share, which represented about half of the cash we had in the bank. I realized that nobody besides me knew how bad things had become and nobody besides me believed in the future, so I decided to take the employees off-site and resell them on the opportunity. 


Chapter 3 : This Time with Feeling

When I was attempting to sell the cloud computing services part of the Loudcloud business, I met with Bill Campbell to update him on where I was with the deal. The deal was critical, because without it, the company would almost certainly go bankrupt.


Chapter 4 : When Things Fall Apart

Once we pushed the Opsware stock price back above $1, the next problem was to rebuild the executive team. We had cloud services executives, but now we were a software company and needed software executives. I

Chapter 5 : Take Care of the People, the Products, and the Profits

One day in a staff meeting in the Loudcloud/Opsware days, someone brought up an issue that had been bothering him for some time. “This place is entirely too profane. It’s making many of the employees uncomfortable.” Others chimed in: “It makes the environment unprofessional. We need to put a stop to it.” Although the complaints were abstract, they were clearly directed at me since I was the biggest abuser of profanity in the company and perhaps in the industry. In those days, I directed the team with such urgency that it was rare for me to say more than a few sentences without an expletive injected somewhere.


Chapter 6 : Concerning the Going Concern

After selling the Loudcloud business to EDS, we immediately plunged into a new crisis. Our investors could not understand how selling all of our revenue and all of our customers could possibly leave us with anything worth investing in. As a result, institutional investors sold all of their Opsware shares, and our stock price fell to $0.35 per share.

Chapter 7 : How to Lead Even When You Don't Know Where You Are Going

When we were in the process of selling Opsware, HP’s initial bid came in at $14 per share. BMC countered with $14.05. Then HP countered them with $14.25. John O’Farrell and I planned our strategy for closing the bidding process. We figured that if we executed correctly, the winning bid would come in at $15 per share or higher. Everybody was extremely excited.


Chapter 8 : First Rule of Entrepreneurship: There Are No Rules

After selling Opsware, I spent a year at HP running the bulk of their software business. And then I tried to figure out what to do next. Should I start another company? Should I be CEO of someone else’s company? Should I retire? Should I do something completely different?