Welcome to Business Books and Company. Every month we read great business books and explore how they can help us navigate our careers. Read along with us so you can become a stronger leader within your company or a more adept entrepreneur. This month we read The Hard Thing about hardware. Hard Things by venture capitalist Ben Horowitz. In The Hard Thing About Hard Things, horowitz recounts lessons he learned about how to run a Silicon Valley startup, largely from his time as a CEO of Loud Cloud, which later became Opswear. Horowitz provides specific advice about hiring, firing, managing emotions, handling growth, deciding whether or not to sell, and everything in between. His thoughts are sometimes unconventional and often punctuated by relevant anecdotes from his experience as a CEO or venture capitalist. But before we get to the book, let's introduce ourselves.
Hi, I'm David Short. I'm a product manager.
My name is Kevin Hoodak, and I'm chief research officer at a commercial real estate research and advisory firm.
And my name is David Copack, and I'm an assistant professor of computer science. Let's start with the author, who is Ben Horowitz.
Ben Horowitz was born in London and raised in Berkeley, California. He earned a BA in Computer Science from Columbia and an Ms in Computer Science from UCLA. And then his first job was as an engineer at Silicon Graphics. He then was a product manager at Netscape, where he met Mark Andreessen, and he was the co founder, president, and CEO of Loud Cloud, which this book is largely about. He is now a venture capitalist and co founder of Andreessen. Horowitz often abbreviated A 16 Z, which he started with Mark in 2009. And in addition to the hard thing about hard things, he also recently wrote a follow up what You Do Is Who You Are how to Create Your Business Culture.
Great. Thank you, David. So let's talk about this company, Loud Cloud. What was Loud Cloud all about? And tell us also about the later incarnation, Opswear.
Yeah, I'm sure we'll get into more details around this as we go through the whole story. But Loud Cloud offered cloud hosting services to large enterprise customers, including Ford and the US. Army. It went public in 2001, and just a year later sold their core managed services business to Eds for $63 million. The remaining business was pivoted over to Opsware, which focused on enterprise software, with Eds as their first customer. In 2007, Opswear was sold to HP for $1.6 billion. And following that sale, Horror spent a year as VP and GM of HP software.
Right. And I think what's really interesting about Cloudcloud is they were doing the cloud as it was kind of coined partially by them before anyone else was really doing it as a service. So they were the AWS, the Azor, the Google Cloud of their day, and they really led to the arrival of that business model. A lot of the book is focused on hiring and firing. What are some of Horowitz's most valuable tips around hiring and firing?
Yeah, I'll take that one, Dave. So when you think about Horowitz's advice on hiring and firing, it really comes down to a very clear, sharp statement he makes, which is hire for strength, not for lack of weakness, which is something that a number of executives like we fall into. He gives a great example of that with when Opswear was looking for their head of sales. This gentleman, Mark Cranney, came in and Ben was impressed with him right away, but he also was getting some pushback from board members and other executives just because Mark was shorter, less kind of put together from an aesthetic standpoint, not out of central casting, as some folks would say, for a head of sales. But really in the interview itself, Ben was very impressed with Mark's, essentially his orientation towards training, and particularly training in sales and sales management. He literally wrote a book, a thick manual about it, that likely impressed Ben. And he also got this sentiment from folks like Mark that you really want to hire for people who don't necessarily just take ownership of their role, ownership of their vertical to the detriment of the team, but who acknowledge the importance of the team. They use words like our company, not my company. Right. And they defer and they look at the accomplishments of the team as a cohesive unit. One thing that Ben also said was, you don't want to be looking for folks who are asking about comp and elevation right from the start. In Mark Cranney's interview, he really didn't even ask about that until the very end of the conversation, and it was more about how can he help this company win, which would become part of his company as well. He also gives some advice around the difficulties in bringing big company executives into small companies, right. And that there are some conflicts there when you have a cohesive team who has been working with a smaller company and helping that company grow, and then you have a big company exec come in who is really geared for twelve to 24 months down the road. So another really important piece of advice from Ben is you want to be hiring for the next six to twelve months, not hiring for that twelve to 24 month outlook. Hire for the company you've got, not the company you want. Obviously it's important to keep those aspirations in mind, but you want somebody who can hit the ground running. And in Ben's world, the biggest mistake you can make is hire somebody who's going to come in and have a month of getting to know their role. You want somebody who can adapt and really hit the ground running from day one.
So one particular piece of advice that Horowitz gives around hiring relates to hiring from a, quote, friends company. That advice by many reviewers of the book is considered quite controversial. Tell us about that advice and why it's controversial.
Sure.
So with Ben, it really comes down to this idea that when you are even considering an employee from a friend's company, you are putting that friendship, that potential business partnership in the future, in jeopardy. And so in the book, he recommends avoiding that as much as possible. When you are considering hiring from a friend's company, it really becomes it's almost a golden rule that he's proposed. He calls it the reflexive principle of employee rating. So quote from him is, if you would be shocked and horrified if Company X hired several of your employees, then you should not hire any of theirs. Right. And he fully acknowledges that this may result in you never hiring from other well, from your friend's companies. Now, that sort of sets off this idea. And the controversy that you were referencing, David, is really about, isn't it, the employees right to operate in their best interest? If they are not having the growth they seek at one company, shouldn't they also be able to apply for an interview at your company, even if the two CEOs of those organizations are friends? So in Ben's world, One, he would set forth potentially some contractual language around companies that you can't leave my company for if they are your friends. And that's a bit controversial as well. And, you know, one thing he referenced that could be a deal breaker or obviously put that employee up for some risk is, you know, if an employee of a friend's company comes to you looking for a job, what? He suggests is that that employee should talk to your friend, the CEO of this other company, first as their boss, and make sure that it's clear there's transparency there, that it's okay in order to even start talking to you as CEO of the company that they want to join. And I feel like I've heard from others and advice that I've heard from managers in the past has been, if you know one of your employees is looking, you should almost give them the full time to look and dismiss them. Right? So it's really putting a lot of risk, and it's limiting opportunity at that employee level who's looking to make a shift in their career. That's why it's been controversial. I am sort of torn on this one, though, because I also think that at that point when you tell a friend that somebody is looking at your company and you even engage them in that conversation, isn't that already in some ways betraying your friend that's the CEO of another company? It's very murky, and it's a tough situation. I think his advice to try to avoid these situations as much as possible is probably a good one.
I think we know that Steve Jobs actually got in trouble for this back in the day when Apple and Google were still kind of friendly with each other. He sent this stern email over to I think it was Eric Schmidt saying, please stop hiring our people. One of your recruiters is actively going after our people. Please stop doing that. And then they sent an email back to each other internally at Google saying, like, hey, are you really doing this? Like, Steve's pretty upset about it. It just takes all the agency away from an employee. And I understand there might be a different world when you're a startup company versus being a large corporation like Apple or Google. But still, I feel like it feels almost like talking down to the employee saying that, oh, I need to get permission from my friend who works at the other company that you want to work at for it to really feel okay. It kind of feels like the king talking down to the peasants, and I just don't really love the tone of it.
And we'll raise later in our episode some of the areas of misalignment with regards to the way that Ben references and regards executives and managers versus line employees. And I think that's an important distinction to make and we should remember that for the end of the episode. Dave.
Yeah, absolutely. Let's come back to that. Okay, let's talk about Ben's thoughts about the ambition of employees. He says that there's a right kind of ambition for employees to have, and he also says that there's a wrong kind of ambition. What kind of ambition should employees have in Ben's eyes?
Yeah, so this goes back a little bit to some of what Kevin was talking about in hiring and firing and who you're looking for. But the way Ben views it is that the right kind of ambition is for the company to succeed versus the wrong type of ambition is for the person to succeed. So you want someone who is actually looking to grow your company, grow their whole team, and is willing to put in the work in that way, as opposed to someone who's just trying to build their own kingdom, get their own priorities taken care of, and focus on themselves over the company. So sort of a focus on we versus me and an acknowledgment that each employee is really important, especially in a start up. And if you have someone who is political and sort of seeking to grow just themselves, that that can cause a lot of turmoil in these companies.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And talking a little bit more about hiring. Another piece of advice that Ben has is in relation to whether you hire an executive for right now, like the next twelve months, or do you hire an executive for what they could do a year or two from now for your company.
Yeah, and I referenced this earlier where Ben really comes down on the side of hiring executives. Not really for the immediate need, but definitely for the next twelve month need. Not necessarily looking forward down the line to that year, two year, three year scale trajectory. Like I mentioned earlier, he really doesn't like the idea of an executive spending a month sort of learning on the job. He views the recruiting function as looking first for fitness within the organization and that is really an outgrowth of the hiring process. And he also believes that the hiring process, right, talent management, that is really the responsibility of a good CEO to develop. So in a way, he really views the CEO's fingerprints as being on every employee through the design of a good hiring and talent management process. Now, it's interesting because he's very much against this idea of learning on the job for a number of these executives, but he will definitely acknowledge in the book that for a fast growth venture startup, CEOs learn on the job, right? So it seems like he's extending this don't hire for on the job experience and learning. Don't hire for the immediate. That maximum only goes as far as the execs and employees, but not necessarily the CEO. He fully acknowledges. There's some on the job learning there, particularly when we get to wartime. The other thing I'd mention too, it's interesting that when he looks at a company as it scales, you could have a super high performing management team for the smaller company and that first stage. But when you actually get to the larger scaled iteration of this company as it continues to grow, he really says your loyalty isn't necessarily to managers, but your loyalty should be to your line employees. So that's why when it comes to retention and who are the best fits, he will often say to side with who will be the best fits for the employees that we have going forward. So whereas he's not looking to hire for the twelve to 24 months, once that twelve to 24 months comes, at least what he says in the book is he's more than willing to move on from some of those. Executives and managers in order to provide the best fit for the company as it scales and serve the employees of the company the best.
That makes a lot of sense and I think we'll come back to that a little bit later. Let's talk about another interesting concept from the book. The difference between a, quote, wartime CEO and a peacetime CEO.
The peacetime for a company he identifies as when they're in sort of a dominant position in a fast growing market. And so in peacetime, a company can really start to branch out, try to be creative and find ways to grow even more through innovation and really test and learn, try out a lot of different things and see what works. Because you have that sort of dominant growth and strong position and you're really not concerned and you can sort of have that creative experience. And sort of the examples he gives is Google with 20% time, right? Debs literally are told to just spend one day a week doing something that has nothing to do with their current role, given that creativity and open space to really grow the company in new and innovative ways. In contrast, in wartime, it's when the company is fighting to defend against an imminent threat and there are all kinds of different threats that those could be. Competition, the macro environment, the market, your supply chain, all of those things could be creating existential threats to the company. And so while a peacetime CEO can focus on growth and exploration and new spaces in wartime because of that existential threat, the CEO really needs everyone to be narrowly focused on that one thing that could cause the whole company to fail. And so don't give people leeway to try new things. It's like all hands on deck, focused on this one thing that could kill us if we don't face it. And so one quote he said was, peacetime CEO gets big, hairy audacious goals. Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand.
Yeah, that's funny. There's a lot of these nice little funny vignettes in the book and funny little concepts that have cool names that he puts behind them. He's a great marketer. Another one is the quote, Freaky Friday management technique. Can you tell us a bit about that?
Yeah, that was an interesting story where the sales engineering and customer support teams at Loud Cloud were just constantly fighting with each other. The customer support would say that engineering wasn't writing like clear tickets and they were saying that everything that they were reporting was like a critical issue. The engineering side was saying that customer support was causing all kinds of problems and wasn't handling the problems that their customers had. And so there was a lot of infighting going back and forth. And so what he decided to do was to bring in the leaders of each of those organizations and tell them that they were going to have a Freaky Friday experience. They were going to swap roles. So the head of Sales engineering became the head of customer support, the head of customer support became the head of sales engineering. And through that they were able to lead those organizations, understand the conflicts and the problems and ultimately come to a better understanding because they really had been in each other's shoes and they understood where the other side was coming from.
I just wanted to add to what Dave mentioned. I really enjoyed in the book some of the talent management, right? Even though it's a book about essentially towards the end of the book, it gets all into when you should sell your company when you shouldn't. Talent management really came forward for me through Ben's writing. I really enjoyed how he was swapping folks in and out of roles. At one point he mentioned when he has a friend and almost co founder who he could either dismiss or demote, he actually decided to demote that person but increase their compensation in order to show that there is a lot of value in that employee, in that co executive as well. But that the company is becoming a different type of company where his management or her management won't necessarily be what's needed. Right. But showing that loyalty still and having some interesting plays with organizational dynamics and organizational structure. But that was an interesting read for this. And when it comes down to it as well, the organizational structure that he talks about needs to be fluid and dynamic like that. And we'll talk about this later. But when it came to the sale of Opswear, organizational structure played big into that. And the transition as well. From loud cloud to opswear.
Yeah, that's a good transition, Kevin, to talk about this idea of when is the right time to sell a company versus try to pursue it through to the point of market leadership. So what's Ben's advice around that?
Yeah, so he really makes it clear cut as to when to sell and when to stand. So, first off, I'd say the first rule he establishes is you should not sell your company if you are very early in a large market and you have a good chance of being number one in that market. Right. He brings up the example of Google and Eric Schmidt. They were in a constantly expanding market. They definitely had the opportunity to be number one. If not, they spent most of their time at number one. And even in the early stages, potential acquirers would come to them with 1 billion plus dollar offers. But really, you couldn't even quantify that potential opportunity. And nobody in that situation could put together any offer that would really exceed Google's market growth or the possibility at that time. So that was a hard stand on the company not sell. The question then becomes when should you sell your company? Right? And he poses the question, is this market really bigger than that which has been exploited to date? That's question one. And then question two is, are we ever going to be number one in this market? And Ben says, if the answer to either of those questions is no, then you should sell. And so it's a clear cut AB system that he's put together for that thought. And ultimately, as you saw, he did end up selling Opswear to HP. There was all sorts of dynamics there in the bidding and due diligence. I remember he had that conflict with Ernst and Young where it seems like he still has a bit of grumpiness around Ernst and Young's involvement in that transaction, but ultimately he decided to sell based on that rule. I also thought that his breakdown of the different types of acquisitions, the three types of acquisitions that he described, was really important and spot on. He described an acquisition of talent or technology, a product acquisition, and then acquiring an entire business. And I thought that was an interesting read out that he did on those three types of acquisitions.
Absolutely. So, thinking about some of the advice in the book, have you seen executives at organizations go contrary to that advice and actually make mistakes? Can you give us some specific examples either within companies that you've worked at or that you've seen in the marketplace?
Yeah, I don't necessarily have any examples of where mistakes were made, but more where lessons were learned. So for example, one of the things that Ben talks about is that customer retention indicators and metrics are a lot harder to define, to then measure and lead by than just simple acquisition and client attraction metrics. Right. And we always see that with clients we work with, where if you're doing customer satisfaction surveys, for example, and you have a 90% who say they're very satisfied with you, if you dig a bit deeper and ask questions differently, well, you may be satisfied, but would you actually grow your wallet, share with us or with that client? Would you actually increase the amount of business you're doing with us? You'll start to see some conflicting answers there, so it doesn't all come down to satisfaction in the retention mindset. There's a lot of other flavors, and he brings that into the software world, obviously by talking about the user experience and user interface and asking deeper questions and having to define deeper metrics around those things in order to really get it right. And so I thought that was interesting when he went into that segment as well. I also think we've all probably had examples of executives being hired who fit that twelve to 24 month need, but not the next immediate twelve months need. And though I can't really put my finger on one in particular, it's definitely out there and something that I see is very much prevalent.
We actually had that at our school. So we've gone through, for various different reasons, I think four or five different college presidents in the last five years, two of which were interim presidents, but we hired one to be a permanent president, and he was only here for a year. And he really was more of a vision guy, more of a big picture guy. When we were going through the middle of the coronavirus pandemic and all the effects that that had both on faculty and enrollment, etc, etc. We needed somebody who was really great to take us through this crisis period. And I think, you know, part of the reason that he didn't fit was because he wasn't really somebody that was right for those next twelve months. He was somebody who was right for where we're going to be maybe 510 years from now.
Sounds like you needed a wartime president, right?
No, exactly. No, we needed a wartime president and he was a peacetime president. So yeah, I feel that very much. And unfortunately, in academia, you know, these hirings happen a long time in advance. Like, I'm on a hiring committee right now for somebody who would start in September, right? And that's just for a regular faculty position. And that's pretty typical. In fact, sometimes you hire faculty a whole year in advance. So with college presidents too, you're hiring somebody far before what, you know, the ground game is going to look like when they actually get in. And so I can't completely blame him for maybe coming in when there wasn't a good match to his skill set. But at the same time, it really speaks to this idea that you need somebody that's good in the moment and if you're a growing institution, that's even more true.
And your example also reminded me of something else that Ben talks about in the book, which is this idea of management debt. And I thought that was really broadly applicable to organizations of any size and in any industry, whereas so much of this book was really narrowly applicable to fast growth startups. For example, some of the universal truths he shared did work for me right on the talent management side in particular. But this management debt element that he describes is when a leader makes not necessarily an easy decision, but one that is more of the immediate convenience and immediate need. So for example, if you have a high performer who is dissatisfied and you give them sort of a quick comp increase to defray that dissatisfaction, that management debt will eventually come due. Just like a credit card in which you might have multiple employees, seeing the politicization of that, seeing how that person got their raise and doing the same thing, and you're really hurting your culture at that point. You're moving and you're working outside of process and protocol. And so that concept of management debt resonated with me quite a bit. And I'm sure the three of us have all seen examples of that in our jobs and in other folks companies as well.
Absolutely. Let's talk about the book as a whole. Were there any elements of the book that you found unconvincing inconsistent or even off putting?
Yeah, I wouldn't say that I necessarily found anything off putting, aside from some of the references to music and hip hop were a bit cringey at times. We quoted the game a few times and Kanye West and some others. So that was interesting to see. But I think that when I think about some of the areas of misalignment that I saw so, for example, I gave that anecdote earlier around basically releasing or moving or coaching out some of the managers who are better suited for smaller companies because you want to help the employees and you want to serve the employees who are there. As the company scales in his writing, he sides with the line employees quite a bit, right? But ultimately, though, the story is built upon the layoffs of 140 employees at Loud Cloud, another 400 at one point and then selling companies. And we don't really hear follow up about those companies after, for example, Opswear, after the HP acquisition, we don't really have an epilogue on how those employees fared, how the company fared. And I'm not saying that things were probably going wrong, but I would have liked to have heard that, right? Because he made the employees the centerpiece of some of these anecdotes and some of these recommendations he was giving. And so I think that's important. That's one thing. When we read the John Door book, for example, I feel like a lot of those anecdotes and those companies that he described, there was a full story of their trajectory and what the results were. And that's why I really like John Doors look into OKRs on that point. I'd also say that when he fully acknowledges that there is an element of luck, particularly when you're in that wartime CEO role and you're making decisions, the CEO is the person who has the closest sight line to all of the data inputs and the big picture, right? So he acknowledges that there is an opportunity to make some mistakes at that point too. I mentioned that friend that he had demoted and he acknowledges so Ben in the book acknowledges that that friend that he demoted could probably do a better job or was even more competent than he himself was. But it's almost like Ben sort of lucked out in having that CEO role, it seems, and he'll acknowledge that. So not necessarily anything that was offputting, but just some areas of misalignment. But it makes sense because later in the book, Ben does say that at his current firm with Marc Andreessen, he will look and he will say, if you have two friends who are co founders, one has to be the CEO, one has to be the decision maker. And it doesn't work to have two heads to this beast. Three, four heads to this beast. And so in a lot of areas where there was misalignment, he does acknowledge this, and some are blind spots like that treatment of employees as you go from company to company, transaction to transaction.
There's actually several things in the book that I found pretty offputting, and I'm curious to see if either of you found them off putting as well. I'll agree with you, Kevin, about the rap lyrics, but the reason I found the rap lyrics kind of off putting was because of some of the profanity in them. And he's very defensive of profanity because he was actually called out in the workplace for profanity. And then he says in the book that, well, I thought about it and I decided I was actually more effective while using it and emphasized my points better. But he doesn't present the. Counterargument almost at all, which I think is true both about the readers of his book and your employees, which is that the second you hear some profanity, for some people, it just turns them off and they're not going to listen to the rest of what you have to say. Let's say you have, for example, a conservative christian who's working at your company, and they're a really great employee, but they really find you abrasive and don't want to deal with you or listen to what you have to say because you're using profanity. And they've instantly kind of turned off to your leadership. Turned off to what you have to say. What's the point of turning them off? You can't control yourself enough to limit what comes out of your mouth. You're an adult. You're the CEO of a company. You should be able to learn to control what you say enough to not turn people off from listening to you. So I don't feel like that counterargument was presented almost at all. Another thing I found off putting in the book was the use of war analogies. I think the wartime CEO, peacetime CEO one, was kind of okay, but that wasn't the only place in the book that he used these kind of war analogies. And I think that's a little bit like putting yourself in the shoes of a soldier almost. I know The Art of War is a very popular book amongst business executives by Sun Zoo, but you're not like literally fighting a war. And he made it sound sometimes like the things that he was doing as an executive or that some of his colleagues were doing were so heroic that they were almost like accurate analogies to compare it to war. And I found that pretty offputting. And then this whole thing that we talked earlier about, about talking to your friend, if they can hire or you can hire their employee, I mean, the friend thing didn't just go there. There was another part of the book where it was if you had hired a friend when you were early on in your startup and then it turned out that the role had outgrown them, that you find another role for them somewhere else at the company. And Kevin, I think you mentioned that, about raising their salary even when you find them in that other role. But the way that it was presented in the book and I guess all of my criticisms here are really stylistic. They don't have so much to do with content as much as to do with style. But style can be offputting, right? That it made it feel like it was kind of like an old boys network, like, oh, this guy's my friend, so I'm going to take care of him or her and put her in another role that is going to make her happy and successful. Whereas I think about in a lot of companies that you're doing something like software development. People are working in very specialized roles and most of those people are not going to be easily shifted into just another role that happens to be open at the company. So it feels like maybe there's a little bit of, oh, it's my friend though, so I'm going to take care of them. That's how it felt between the lines to me a little bit. I wonder how you guys felt about those things.
Yeah, and Copec, I definitely think one of the examples I was going to give, too, where you mentioned the old boys club almost again, he writes that he wants to be looking out for the mid level line employees and the engineers, not necessarily the executives and managers. But then, of course, when it's time to form Andreessen Horowitz, he mentions all of the managers and executives that he brought from Opswear into that firm. Right. And he's showing that there's a really high level of expertise and skill now at Andreessen Horowitz in its early days, but at the same time, he essentially gutted Opswear. And so there's a bit of a misalignment there for me as well. I also think that one of the big lessons that he talks about, I think he calls it the torture, right. Which is the role of being CEO and having all of these inputs. You're the only one with sightline to all of the information coming in and you're the only one with access to the big picture. He mentions and he speaks about this emotional roller coaster and he says one of the things, it's the job of the CEO to put in place protocols and policies that manage the emotional roller coaster. But then on the flip side, to your point, he has to use profanity, though, and it's part of company policy and it's part of being a, quote, wartime CEO that there's lots of profanity and attacking others in the workplace. I definitely see that happening in companies that I know and I have worked at. I think sometimes profanity and leading by pointing out what someone needs to get done, even if it's done in some would call harsher terms, is important. But again, if his whole point is the emotional roller coaster can hurt a CEO, you put in place protocols and practices to avoid that emotional roller coaster. Is it that he's sort of breaking that rule a bit when it comes to profanity because there needs to be that bleed off, or is he just really saying one thing and doing another? And there was a lot of that in this book, too, some of that saying one thing, doing another, which is interesting.
Absolutely. So we talked about some negatives, but let's talk about our key positive takeaways from the book.
Yeah, I really liked a couple of points that he made around handling stressful situations. So one of the things that he says is, you don't need to be a cheerleader during hard times. You actually need to be straight with your team about the problems so that everyone knows what's at risk and where to focus. So don't just like put on, you know, rose tinted lenses and make it seem like everything's fine. Be transparent with your company and let them know that, like, things are at risk, we are at an existential risk and if we don't fix these problems, we are going to go down. And that's pretty different from what I've seen in a lot of other business books. The other thing I liked was that he makes it clear that there is no recipe for being a CEO at a startup. That rather than a lot of other business books will try and say, oh, you know, take steps one, two and three and you'll end up with this successful company. His point is the job you need to do is going to be constantly changing and what you need to do is just know what the top priorities are. But what those are are going to vary dramatically depending on what business you're in, what challenges you're confronting. And rather than saying, oh, this is what you do, it's saying you just need to be able to adapt and react to this very fast changing environment.
How about you, Kevin? What were your key takeaways?
Yeah, not so much a key takeaway, but something that I enjoyed to Short's point as well was more than other business books that I've read, he was fairly formulaic in his recommendation. So a lot of If X, then Y statements that I thought were useful, like that idea of whether or not to sell your company or stand on your company, it had a very clear sort of A and B. If A and B, then don't sell. And I thought that was very useful. Echoing Short, I think my key takeaway really came down to that CEOs are the only ones who have that best and only sight lines. The information coming in there's that need to be decisive. It results in that learning on the job decisions are sometimes made in haste that have to be right for the survival of the company. That creates the quote unquote torture that I mentioned earlier. I think it was another key takeaway. I think that this book was sort of undersold in terms of its focus on talent management and hiring an HR policy. I think the appendix that he puts in there is all about the questions you should be asking when hiring a sales manager, for example. So I thought that was a really big part of the book for me that I didn't expect coming in. And that's part of that is because it seems like Ben really does believe that it's the role of the CEO to create that talent recruitment and retention framework. They don't necessarily execute on it, but they have to create one that's the best fit for their objectives and I also love the idea he mentioned. Again, we've heard this in previous books, particularly with John Dore, but that check ins, right? These one on one meetings that he mentions, they are super important. He recommends that they happen if not monthly, at least quarterly, but really that they are the employees meeting, not the manager's meeting. And I love the repetition of that and was definitely a key takeaway for me. For me.
We'd go again back to that hiring somebody that's right for right now, not somebody who's right for a couple of years from now. I mentioned the example earlier of our college president but I've been on hiring committees the last few years and we've often, I think, been making that mistake. As we've been analyzing candidates, we've been seeing what role could they grow into? Where do we want to go a few years from now? We actually have some very immediate needs like right now that we need to have fulfilled and we sometimes overlook that because we get so excited about where this candidate could take us a few years from now. And so that was my number one thing and I think I'm actually going to bring that into a hiring committee that I'm on right now.
Yes, it's a bit of a derivation of one thing that one of my business partners always says is don't go to war with the army you want, you go to war with the army you've got. And that immediate next twelve months is as important to the survival of your business or more important than thinking forward and aspiring to that 24 month vision. So that's definitely a key takeaway. Copec.
Yeah, I think that's actually a Donald Rumsfeld quote. So it's good that your business partner is up on Donald Rumsfeld. All right. So thinking about the book as a whole, do you recommend the book? If yes, who should read it?
So I'll start with this. I was the one who had picked this book as I introduced it in our last episode and in the beginning of the book I started to think that I had made a mistake just because it was so focused on fast growth startups, venture backed startups and advice for CEOs of those organizations. And I believe at one point I had texted you guys saying essentially that it wasn't until I got to the meat of the book I really enjoyed the middle meat of the book, which was his experience in more mature, loud Cloud. But then once he got to Opswear and I thought a lot of the best lessons came from that middle of the book. And so as a result, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it directly unless you were looking to be that fast growth startup, venture backed CEO, which is obviously 0.1% of the population. I would also recommend it to those who are looking to work in one of those firms right. Or even interviewing at one in particular because what you have here is Ben really explaining his mindset and how he intentionally crafts the talent at a company, the questions that he asks in these interviews, and what his expectations are. So if you're ultimately looking to work in this industry and in an organization like that, I do think this would be useful for you. But I would not recommend this book outside of those two groups, although I did enjoy it.
David, what about you? Do you recommend it?
I think I'd echo a lot of what Kevin had to say. I think this kind of comes back to something we saw in one of the other books we reviewed, Tape Sucks, which is that yeah, it's very focused on being the CEO of a hyper growth venture back start up. And if that is something that you aspire to, I think this is a phenomenal book that gives you a lot of insights into what that world is like. And to Kevin's point, potentially, if you want to work in venture capital or you just want to work at one of those startups that are trying to grow really rapidly, having a view into what the CEO might be thinking and how you might be able to help the CEO, I think it could be helpful there as well. But yeah, I would certainly agree that the vast majority of people are not going to be working in these types of companies. And so for them it has some entertaining vignettes and I think there are some takeaways, like the hire for the next twelve months type things that I think apply certainly outside of that world, but it's definitely not for everyone.
Yes, I totally agree with both of you. This book is not relevant to most people. It's not going to help most people with their careers. If you are somebody who does do a lot of hiring, then I could see this book in particular being helpful to you, especially if you're hiring for a highgrowth startup, or of course, if you're the CEO of a high growth startup. I think some of the hiring advice, like I mentioned earlier, will be helpful to me. But did I need to read the whole book to get that advice? Probably not. So I think for most people, in my opinion, this isn't the most helpful book. Okay. Next month we're going to be reading King of Capital. David, this is your pick. Do you want to tell us a bit about it?
Yeah, absolutely. So king of Capital, the remarkable Rise, Fall and Rise Again of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone by David Kerry and John Morris. So this book really, just as it says, gives the whole history of Blackstone, the founding, the pitfalls and eventual extreme success of an organization really at the forefront of the private equity industry. And so I think it'll be a really interesting view into that sector.
All right, is there anything that either of you want to plug and how can our listeners get in touch with you?
You can follow me on Twitter at.
David G short and you can follow me on Twitter at Hudak Basement. H-U-D-A-K-S-B-A-S-E-M-E-N-T Hudaks basement.
Now I'm on Twitter at Dave Kopeck. D-A-V-E-K-O-P-E-C. We want to thank everyone for listening this month. We're really excited to have you with us. We want you to remember to leave us a review on your podcast player of choice, whether that be Apple Podcast or Spotify. And don't forget to follow us or subscribe that, you've get all of our new episodes. Have a great month.