Professor Josh Ehrig, Professor James B. Peterson - Hustle Hard - Week Twelve & Thirteen lyrics

Hustle Hard Week Twelve & Thirteen Reading: Ben Horowitz "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" Chapters 1-4, 7-8 Key Takeaways: Chapter One: There are no shortcuts to knowledge, especially knowledge gained from personal experience. When the facts seem to dictate a certain outcome, learn to look for alternate narratives and explanations... Most business relationships either become too tense to tolerate or not tense enough to be productive after a while. Either people challenge each other to the point where they don't like each other or they become complacent about each other's feedback and no longer benefit from the relationship. Chapter Two: Most important rule of raising money privately = Look for a market of one. You only need one investor to say yes, so it's best to ignore the other thirty who say "no" Treat the people who leave fairly, or the people who stay will never trust you again. Chapter Three: Product Strategy = Figuring out the right product is the innovator's job, not the consumer's job. It is always a good idea to ask yourself: What am I not doing? Chapter Four: Startup CEOs should not play the odds. When you are building a company, you must believe there is an answer and you cannot pay attention to your odds of finding it. You just have to find it. If a warrior keeps d**h in mind at all times and lives as though each day might be his last, he will conduct himself properly in all his actions. Every great entrepreneur from Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg went through the Struggle and struggle they did, so you are not alone. Things to help with the Struggle: 1. Don't put it all on your shoulders 2. This is not checkers; this is motherf**in' chess 3. Play long enough and you might get lucky 4. Don't take it personally 5. Remember that this is what separates the women from the girls. Single biggest personal improvement as CEO occurred on the day when I stopped being too positive. Three key reasons why being transparent about your company's problems makes sense: 1. Trust 2. The more brains working on the hard problems, the better. 3. A good culture is like the old RIP routing protocol: Bad news travels fast; good news travels slow. If you run a company, you will experience overwhelmingly psychological pressure to be overly positive. Stand up to the pressure, face your fear, and tell it like it is. On firing employees: Every CEO likes to say she runs a great company. It's hard to tell whether the claim is true until the company or the CEO has to do something really difficult. Firing an executive is a good test. Spend zero time on what you could have done, and devote all of your time on what you might do. Because in the end, nobody cares; just run your company. Chapter Seven Focus on what I needed to get right and stop worrying about all the things that I did wrong or might do wrong. Over the past ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been. Follow the Leader: What makes people want to follow the leader? Three key traits. 1. The ability to articulate the vision 2. The right kind of ambition 3. The ability to achieve the vision Chapter Eight Just when you think that there are things that you can count on in business, you quickly find that the sky is purple. When this happens, it usually does no good to keep arguing that the sky is blue. You just have to get on and deal with the fact that it's going to look like Barney for a while. In the technology business, you rarely know everything up front. The difference between being mediocre and magical is often the difference between lettings people take creative risk and holding them too tightly accountable. Accountability is important, but it's not the only thing that's important. On selling your company: When faced with the decision of whether to sell your company, there is no easy answer. However, preparing yourself intellectually and emotionally with help.