#41 The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one-time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories, and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets, they're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high, so I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today, and I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. The problem with these books is that they attempt to provide a recipe for challenges that have no recipes. There's no recipe for really complicated dynamic situations. There's no recipe for building a high-tech company. There's no recipe for leading a group of people out of trouble. And there's no recipe for making a series of hit songs. There's no recipe for playing NFL quarterback. There's no recipe for running for president. And there's no recipe for motivating teams when your business has turned to crap.
That's the hard thing about hard things. There is no formula for dealing with them.
Nonetheless, there are many bits of advice and experience that can help with the hard things. I do not attempt to present a formula in this book. Instead, I present my story and the difficulties that I have faced as an entrepreneur, a CEO, and now as a venture capitalist. I still find these lessons useful, especially as I work with a new generation of founders.
I share my experiences in the hopes of providing clues and inspiration for others who find themselves in the struggle to build something out of nothing. So that is from the book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. And the subtitle is actually building a business when there are no easy answers. And that last sentence there, I share my experiences in the hope of providing clues and inspiration for others who find themselves in the struggle to build something out of nothing. In case this is your first time listening to Founders, that's exactly what this podcast is about. We're trying to learn from the company builders that came before us. And to do that, I read a biography or autobiography every week for the podcast. And then what follows is the highlights and notes that I left myself. And hopefully you find these ideas as useful in your own work. So I want to talk, so here's the interesting thing about this book before we get into my notes and highlights. So I actually read, according to Amazon, I read this book three years ago, and it came back on my radar when I was taking notes on a podcast for Founders Notes. And the founder of this software company called Front, her name is Matilda Collin, and she was talking about some experiences that kind of resonated with me. So one of the questions was, she went to both business school and worked in a startup. So a lot of people see those as very different experiences. And so I talked about this on the podcast before, I started companies when I was in college, and while I was in college, I was also in the pilot entrepreneurship program. This is over a decade ago. So now I think almost every college has entrepreneurship programs, which is kind of oxymoronic in a way. But, she said something, her answer to that question was, which of those experiences did you learn more? And she said, of course, working at a startup, right? But then she said, the thing in business school that was most helpful was meeting entrepreneurs that had built companies. That inspired me.
I had that same experience. I remember almost nothing of those two years in that program, other than when successful founders had came to the class and talked. And specifically, this one guy came in. He was gonna donate $3 million and build, either to have his name on the building or something like that. And the prerequisite for the donation was that he would get to speak to the people that were in the entrepreneurship program. And in 30 minutes, he taught us more about building businesses than I had learned in two years. And then the Q&A section, when they opened it up, there's probably only maybe like, what, 30 or 40 of us in the room at the time. And I just remember lighting them up with question after question after question, because I was so fascinated. Little did I know, a decade or a decade and a half later, I'd be doing a podcast that kind of learns from people that build companies like this. So, and then the second thing she said that stuck out to me was, she talked about the book that helped the most in her building the company. She's still doing this. They went from, I think, zero customers to about 3,500, and from zero employees to maybe 50 or 100 now. I don't remember the exact number at the moment. But she said the book that helped her the most was The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, because she said that knowing that it's hard for everyone will allow you to just focus on progress and not obviously the feelings that you're going through. Because this book is a little different from the other autobiographies and the biography that we've covered in the past, where I would say the majority of the book, it's a description on his unhealthy mental health at the time and crying, not sleeping, sweating. I'm not going to go into a lot of the details of the company because I want to focus it explicitly on his key lessons for founders. But the company goes from, I think, zero people to 500 and then back down to 80 and then back up to 600 and then it's eventually sold. And this happens over, I think, an eight year period. So, it's a very honest look, in my opinion, on what founders talk about the least. And that's like, how do you manage your own mental health, especially when you're in charge? So, I'm going to skip over a lot of his early life and I want to just get to the parts that I think are the most valuable for us. And so this is when he first sees the product that eventually becomes Netscape and then he meets his long-time partner. For those of you who don't know, Ben Horowitz founds... He works at Netscape under Marc Andreessen. After that, Marc Andreessen and him start this company called LoudCloud that turns into Opsware, and then later on, they start the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. So they have a very unique relationship because they're partners over 20 years over multiple different companies. You don't usually see that. One day, one of my coworkers showed me a new product called Mosaic, which was developed by some students at the University of Illinois. Mosaic was essentially a graphical interface to the Internet, a technology formerly only used by scientists and researchers. It amazed me. It was so obviously the future, and I was so obviously wasting my time working on anything but the Internet. Several months later, I read about a company called Netscape, which had been co-founded by former Silicon Graphics founder Jim Clark. Longtime Founders listeners will know who Jim Clark is. I did a podcast on him maybe six months ago. I don't exactly know. It was based on Michael Lewis's great book called The New New Thing. Jim Clark, I mean, every founder we cover on this podcast or I cover on this podcast is eccentric and quite a character. Jim Clark is one of the most eccentric people in a really good way. It's a fascinating story. If you haven't listened to the podcast, I definitely recommend it. So it says it's founded by Jim Clark and Mosaic inventor Marc Andreessen. I instantly decided that I should interview with a job there or for a job there.