作者：Ben Horowitz
版本：FIRST EDITION EPub Edition MARCH 2014
《The Hard Thing About Hard Things》是最近创业圈刷的很厉害的即《Lean Startup》和《Zero to One》之后的一本书，到处有人推荐，于是下载了原版阅读
因为MacBook上面的Kindle不能同步amazon.cn中的电子书，所以这次尝试了一下iBooks读epub格式的电子书，感觉还不错，和Kindle的功能无异
全书开宗明义，什么是《The Hard Thing About Hard Things》：The hard thing isn’t setting a big, hairy, audacious goal. The hard thing is laying people off when you miss the big goal. The hard thing isn’t hiring great people. The hard thing is when those “great people” develop a sense of entitlement and start demanding unreasonable things. The hard thing isn’t setting up an organizational chart. The hard thing is getting people to communicate within the organization that you just designed. The hard thing isn’t dreaming big. The hard thing is waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when the dream turns into a nightmare. 对于这些 Hard Things，作者很详细的为如何开除管理层、如何大批量裁员、如何让创始成员离开决策层等等这些问题撰写了实操指南，真雷锋啊
Ben 通过讲述自己的创业历程来阐述很多关于创业的道理，读起来像小说般跌宕起伏，从整体上来看，作者一直在为眼前的突发事件疲于奔命，用毅力和努力换取了阶段性的成功，但是缺乏长远的规划和风险管控的意识，也很少在书中提到自己的使命和目标，我不清楚这是否是作者困难的真实来源，无论如何，要位作者的真诚和分享点赞
Ben 在书中提到他的祖父母都是中产主义者，父亲为共产主义杂志工作，文中也引用了马克思的文字，想到《Zero to One》的作者 Peter Thiel 对共产主义颇具好感，再加上最近 Zuckerberg 和 Elon Musk 也频繁的造访中国，不知道是否共产主义思潮在西方的互联网企业家圈里面是比较盛行，感觉在自由主义市场环境下面的集权企业，发展是会比较快
有人问过作者一个问题：“What would you do if capital were free?”，这个问题犹如面试的时候问应聘者：“如果不考虑收入的情况，你会去选择做什么工作？”一样，是一种好的提问方式，用来判断被问人真实意图的方式，再比如问：“What would you do if ice cream had the exact same nutritional value as broccoli?”
作者在尝试出售自己公司的时候，得到了 CAA 的 Michael 的建议，关于Deadline的建议非常重要的帮助到了作者，并完成了自己公司的高价出售：Gentlemen, I’ve done many deals in my lifetime and through that process, I’ve developed a methodology, a way of doing things, a philosophy if you will. Within that philosophy, I have certain beliefs. I believe in artificial deadlines. I believe in playing one against the other. I believe in doing everything and anything short of illegal or immoral to get the damned deal done.
在作者第二个公司准备出售的时候，Michael 又给了一个关键的建议：“Well, boys, if you are going to have a dog race, then you are going to need a rabbit. And Oracle will be one hell of a rabbit.” 意思是不要确定明确的收购实施目标，否则很有可能会什么都得不到：
More than a month passed without a word, and I figured the M&A talks had ended. I began refocusing on how to make the necessary changes to keep us competitive. And then I received a call from Bob Beauchamp, the CEO of BMC Software. He offered $13.25 per share. I held firm: “Bob, that’s great, but the number is fourteen dollars per share.” Bob said that he’d have to think about it. He called back two days later and offered $14 per share. Wow. The dog had caught the bus.
John and I immediately called back all the other suitors to let them know that we had an offer that we planned to take. Hewlett-Packard was still interested and offered $13.50 per share in an effort to make sure that I wasn’t bluffing. I responded that as a public company CEO, I couldn’t take a lower offer. HP eventually offered $14.25 or $1.65 billion in cash. We had a deal.
Ben 的 relationship manager Anthony 在处理和母公司和客户 EDS 关系时候一段，非常的绅士，措辞值得学习：
After listening for a bit, Frank pushed back his chair, stood up, and shouted, “You fucking want to know what I think about Opsware? I think it’s the biggest goddamn piece of shit! All I hear about all day is how much this product fucking sucks. I’m going to do everything I can to get you guys thrown out of here.”
Frank revealed his plan to remove all of our software immediately, demanding all funds to be returned. He was dead serious.
Anthony remained calm, looked him in the eye, and said, “Frank, I will do exactly as you say. I’ve heard you loud and clear. This is a terrible moment for you and for us. Allow me to use your phone, and I will call Ben Horowitz and give him your instructions. But before I do, can I ask you one thing? If my company made the commitment to fix these issues, how much time would you give us to do that?”
He responded, “Sixty days.” Anthony told him the clock had just started ticking and left his office immediately. It was good news: We had exactly sixty days to fix all the problems and make the deployment work. If we did not, we were done. We had sixty days to live.
在遇到非常强大的对手的时候，作者发表了一个演说，挽救了公司的命运：“I have some bad news. We are getting our asses kicked by BladeLogic and it’s a product problem. If this continues, I am going to have to sell the company for cheap. There is no way for us to survive if we don’t have the winning product. So, I am going to need every one of you to do something. I need you to go home tonight and have a serious conversation with your wife, husband, significant other, or whoever cares most about you and tell them, ‘Ben needs me for the next six months.’ I need you to come in early and stay late. I will buy you dinner, and I will stay here with you. Make no mistake, we have one bullet left in the gun and we must hit the target.”
Early in my career as an engineer, I’d learned that all decisions were objective until the first line of code was written. After that, all decisions were emotional. 这个其实是很有意思的，在开始执行之前的所有决策都是理想的，但是一旦开始执行，所有的决策就会变得情绪起来，这个确实是这样，我也有很深的感触，当决策者和执行者都陷入进去的时候，就是非常危险的时候了
书中引用了一段 Peter Thiel 的文字：“There are several different frameworks one could use to get a handle on the indeterminate vs. determinate question. The math version is calculus vs. statistics. In a determinate world, calculus dominates. You can calculate specific things precisely and deterministically. When you send a rocket to the moon, you have to calculate precisely where it is at all times. It’s not like some iterative startup where you launch the rocket and figure things out step by step. Do you make it to the moon? To Jupiter? Do you just get lost in space? There were lots of companies in the ’90s that had launch parties but no landing parties.
“But the indeterminate future is somehow one in which probability and statistics are the dominant modality for making sense of the world. Bell curves and random walks define what the future is going to look like. The standard pedagogical argument is that high schools should get rid of calculus and replace it with statistics, which is really important and actually useful. There has been a powerful shift toward the idea that statistical ways of thinking are going to drive the future.” 以前读《数据化决策》的时候就对统计学印象深刻，看到在决策上，确实是不可获取的
作者认为，在公司内部，将不好的消息传播开来是很重要的，让大家有一种危机意识，这个确实要这么做，尤其是在创业型的公司，危机意识极其重要，而且越早让大家知道，就会减少不必要的不确定的负面的猜测：A good culture is like the old RIP routing protocol: Bad news travels fast; good news travels slow.
“Trust me.” That’s what a CEO says every day to her employees. Trust me: This will be a good company. Trust me: This will be good for your career. Trust me: This will be good for your life. A layoff breaks that trust. In order to rebuild trust, you have to come clean.”
在裁员的时候，作者认为：The most important step in the whole exercise is training the management team. If you send managers into this super-uncomfortable situation with no training, most of them will fail
因此在招募一个合格的人才的时候，就要有心理准备（说实话这段文字我还无法接受）：When you recruit an executive, you paint a beautiful picture of her future in your company. You describe in great depth and in vibrant color how awesome it will be for her to accept your offer and how much better it will be than joining that other company. Then one day you realize you must fire her. Reconcile that, Ms. CEO.