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- 🧠Leading When It’s Hard
Hey there!
It’s Sparsh here!👋
Founders and investors are usually judged on strategy, markets, and returns, but the real game is often emotional and psychological. 💡
Ben Horowitz argues that most companies don’t die because the CEO is dumb, they die because the CEO hesitates when it’s time to make a hard move. 💪
In other words, the enemy is usually inside the founder’s head, not outside in the market. 🧑💼
Let’s dive in to know more! 🚀
Credit: This article draws on insights shared by Ben Horowitz in his interview on the “My First Million” podcast with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.
💬 Why management “playbooks” mostly fail
Traditional management books promise step‑by‑step recipes, but leadership rarely plays out like a neat checklist. Ben compares it to reading a manual on how to be an NFL quarterback:
It makes sense in theory until a 290‑pound defender is sprinting at you trying to end your career. 🏈
➡️ In real startups:
The real difficulty is not “how to set OKRs (Objectives and Key Results)”, it is, “Do I fire half the company to survive, knowing I promised them a big future six months ago?” 🧐
The pain stems from the emotional gap between what you told people yesterday and the harsh reality you must face today. That gap causes hesitation, and hesitation often spells the death of the company. 📝
🧱 Truth as Your Only Weapon
Great leadership means grinding toward unfiltered honesty, no matter how ugly it looks on you. Forget gossip or bruised ego; ask what is really broken, why, and if it is fixable. 👥
This mirrors top creatives baring their flaws in work: vulnerable, exposed, real. ⬆️
Founders must do the same to lead effectively, accepting life’s unfairness without mental meltdown. 🤝
👥 Script for the CTO Meltdown
A founder vents to Ben about how his CTO made a junior cry; he said he is great technically but awful elsewhere. This is not a firing call, but a plea for confrontation words.
Here is Ben’s exact playbook, step by step:
This cuts through defence, isolates behaviour from identity, and demands action. Skip it, and engineering silos form, attrition spikes, politics brew, board freaks out. 💢
🧨 Confrontation Without the Drama
Founders freeze not from doubt, but wordlessness. Ben’s rules strip away ego:
✅Do:
Zero in on one fixable behaviour. 🔍
Share the exact truth, no hype or sugar. 💯
Judge salvageability first; coach only if viable. 🎯
❌ Never:
Obsess over your “tough guy” image. 💪🏻
Serve shit sandwiches (praise-critique-praise). 🥪
People swallow bitter pills when they sense pure honesty. 🤝
🧠 When Confidence Cracks
Ben identifies lack of confidence as the number one reason founders fail as CEOs. 📉
This crisis typically strikes after a visible mistake—a bad hire, wrong product decision, or move that hurts real people and makes you question your ability to lead. ⚡
The danger appears as hesitation disguised by rationalisations. To say things like "The press will criticise if we reverse this high-profile hire," "We celebrated them too publicly," or "We haven't given them enough time yet” , all these feel logical in the moment, but they delay action until the damage becomes irreversible. 💢
No job is better than a bad executive wrecking your organisation, and smart founders trust their eyes and act fast—waiting eliminates any IQ advantage. Investors should back confidence stabilisers over pure competence. 💼
🧩 Culture = What You Enforce Daily
Ben on why posters mean nothing: True culture lives in behaviours you reward every day and punish without exception. Witness substandard work and stay silent? You just approved the new, lower standard. ⚖️
His firm's non-negotiable rules:
Late to founder meetings? Pay $10 per minute—entrepreneur time is sacred. ⏰
Trash-talk portfolio founders online? Immediate firing—loyalty is absolute. 📁
Pick 2-3 shocking, memorable standards for your company. Enforce them relentlessly until everyone internalises "this is who we are." 📋
🏁 Hard Problems Demand Harder Founders
Ben lights up discussing AI startups cracking defence materials, mineral prospecting, and public safety systems. 🛡️
These blend hardware, manufacturing, and national priorities—not just simple software—but Elon Musk has proven that massive scale works.📊
📝Founders and investors take note: Only rock-solid emotional foundations survive these arenas. You need unflinching conversations, swift cuts, authentic culture, and post-mistake confidence recovery. Pitch decks ignore these, but they decide if your company lives long enough to matter. 🏢
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