The first part of this book is a kind of autobiography. Ben Horowitz, now one of Silicon Valley's best-known founders and venture capitalists, recounts his turbulent career. Starting with his childhood, his first management position at Netscape, his first company Loudcloud, its near-bankruptcy during the DotCom crash in 2000, its transformation into the software company Opsware, and its sale in 2007 to HP (for $1.6 billion), all the way to the founding of the prestigious investment firm Andreessen Horowitz.
In the second part, he describes the strategies he used to guide his company through the crisis period of the early 2000s. He gives concrete advice, e.g., how to hire the right people, how important it is to train them well, how important regular (crisis) communication is, how to keep your employees motivated despite hundreds of hours of unpaid overtime (without which the company would not have survived), and how to demote or fire your employees in the "right" way, should that be necessary – for instance, when the company (and thus the demands on the position) have changed faster than the employee could grow with it.
The book's first part is exciting, humorous, and worth reading for anyone who worked in the IT industry during the DotCom crash.
The second part focuses on managing rather large, publicly traded companies with supervisory boards and multiple levels of management. Small business owners can certainly take away a piece of advice or two, for example, about the "right" way to terminate an employee, but they will wonder for most of the chapters how much this should ever be relevant to them.
In any case, the reader does not receive dry management theory, but pragmatic tips from hard-core practice and the most unpleasant management situations.
🎧 Suitable as an audiobook? Yes.
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