The Thimbles Summary
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
The book in one sentence
There is no recipe for leading a company through real trouble, but there are hard-won lessons from someone who has been through it.
Who it's for
Founders and chief executives, especially those facing layoffs, difficult hires, cash crises or the loneliness of the top job, and managers who want to understand what their CEO is going through.
The big idea
Most management books describe how to do things when they’re going well. Horowitz writes about what to do when they aren’t. He co-founded Loudcloud, an early cloud-hosting company, which went public in 2001 just as the dot-com bubble burst. Over the following years he laid off staff, came close to collapse more than once, sold the original hosting business and rebuilt the company as Opsware, a software firm. He sold Opsware to Hewlett-Packard in 2007 for about \$1.6 billion, and later co-founded the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz with Marc Andreessen. The book is his attempt to give founders the honest advice he wishes he’d had.
The full summary continues with the five ideas worth keeping, three things to try this week, the 5-minute deep dive and our full verdict, as a PDF to keep.
Get this summary · €1.99
Also available in: Polski · Română · Español · Português (Brasil) · Français · Italiano · Deutsch · ไทย