《The Hard Thing About Hard Things》讀書筆記

作者：Ben Horowitz
版本：FIRST EDITION EPub Edition MARCH 2014

《The Hard Thing About Hard Things》是最近創業圈刷的很厲害的即《Lean Startup》和《Zero to One》之後的一本書，到處有人推薦，於是下載了原版閱讀

因為MacBook上面的Kindle不能同步amazon.cn中的電子書，所以這次嘗試了一下iBooks讀epub格式的電子書，感覺還不錯，和Kindle的功能無異

全書開宗明義，什麼是《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. 對於這些 Hard Things，作者很詳細的為如何開除管理層、如何大批量裁員、如何讓創始成員離開決策層等等這些問題撰寫了實操指南，真雷鋒啊

Ben 通過講述自己的創業歷程來闡述很多關於創業的道理，讀起來像小說般跌宕起伏，從整體上來看，作者一直在為眼前的突發事件疲於奔命，用毅力和努力換取了階段性的成功，但是缺乏長遠的規劃和風險管控的意識，也很少在書中提到自己的使命和目標，我不清楚這是否是作者困難的真實來源，無論如何，要位作者的真誠和分享點贊

Ben 在書中提到他的祖父母都是中產主義者，父親為共產主義雜誌工作，文中也引用了馬克思的文字，想到《Zero to One》的作者 Peter Thiel 對共產主義頗具好感，再加上最近 Zuckerberg 和 Elon Musk 也頻繁的造訪中國，不知道是否共產主義思潮在西方的網際網路企業家圈裡面是比較盛行，感覺在自由主義市場環境下面的集權企業，發展是會比較快

有人問過作者一個問題：“What would you do if capital were free?”，這個問題猶如面試的時候問應聘者：“如果不考慮收入的情況，你會去選擇做什麼工作？”一樣，是一種好的提問方式，用來判斷被問人真實意圖的方式，再比如問：“What would you do if ice cream had the exact same nutritional value as broccoli?”

作者在嘗試出售自己公司的時候，得到了 CAA 的 Michael 的建議，關於Deadline的建議非常重要的幫助到了作者，並完成了自己公司的高價出售：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.

在作者第二個公司準備出售的時候，Michael 又給了一個關鍵的建議：“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.” 意思是不要確定明確的收購實施目標，否則很有可能會什麼都得不到：

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 在處理和母公司和客戶 EDS 關係時候一段，非常的紳士，措辭值得學習：

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.

在遇到非常強大的對手的時候，作者發表了一個演說，挽救了公司的命運：“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. 這個其實是很有意思的，在開始執行之前的所有決策都是理想的，但是一旦開始執行，所有的決策就會變得情緒起來，這個確實是這樣，我也有很深的感觸，當決策者和執行者都陷入進去的時候，就是非常危險的時候了

書中引用了一段  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.” 以前讀《資料化決策》的時候就對統計學印象深刻，看到在決策上，確實是不可獲取的

作者認為，在公司內部，將不好的訊息傳播開來是很重要的，讓大家有一種危機意識，這個確實要這麼做，尤其是在創業型的公司，危機意識極其重要，而且越早讓大家知道，就會減少不必要的不確定的負面的猜測：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.”

在裁員的時候，作者認為：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

因此在招募一個合格的人才的時候，就要有心理準備（說實話這段文字我還無法接受）：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.