Recommendations
Books Like The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Best books to read after The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
The Hard Thing About Hard Things is about the psychological and operational reality of running a startup at the edge of failure — what business frameworks leave out. These 8 books extend into founder psychology, the culture of Silicon Valley, the economics of venture capital, and the organizational challenges that accompany rapid growth.
- 1Buy
What You Do Is Who You Are
by Ben Horowitz
Horowitz's follow-up on building and maintaining company culture — using Toussaint Louverture, Genghis Khan, Shaka Senghor, and the Hell's Angels as case studies in how leaders create and transmit values.
- 2Buy
Zero to One
by Peter Thiel
Thiel's strategic framework for building transformative companies — the intellectual companion to Horowitz's operational account, together covering both what kind of company to build and how to manage it through the difficult periods Horowitz describes.
- 3Buy
Shoe Dog
by Phil Knight
Nike founder Phil Knight's memoir of building Nike from a handshake deal with a Japanese shoe company to a global brand — the closest parallel in tone and honesty to Horowitz's account, covering the same founding drama, cash crises, management challenges, and eventual triumph.
- 4Buy
High Output Management
by Andrew S. Grove
Intel co-founder Andy Grove's operational guide to management — covering leverage, one-on-ones, performance reviews, and the 'task-relevant maturity' framework for delegation — the management bible that Horowitz and much of Silicon Valley treats as foundational.
- 5Buy
The Power Law
by Sebastian Mallaby
The history of the venture capital industry that provided the capital behind companies like Opsware — including detailed accounts of Benchmark, Sequoia, and the investment dynamics that Horowitz experienced from the founder side.
- 6Buy
Creativity, Inc.
by Ed Catmull
Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull's account of building a creative culture that consistently produces excellent films — the most detailed and honest account of creative leadership, management, and culture-building in a successful company that complements Horowitz's account of managing crisis.
- 7Buy
Founders at Work
by Jessica Livingston
Interviews with the founders of Apple, PayPal, Hotmail, TiVo, and dozens of other startups about the early days of building their companies — providing the first-person experiential confirmation of the patterns Horowitz describes.
- 8Buy
No Rules Rules
by Reed Hastings
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and INSEAD professor Erin Meyer's account of the Netflix culture of 'freedom and responsibility' — the organizational innovation that allowed Netflix to scale without the bureaucratic ossification that kills many successful startups, contrasting with the wartime-CEO culture Horowitz describes.
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