Concept
Nobody cares
Nobody cares is the advice Horowitz's mentor gave him when his company was failing: not the press, not the board, not the employees will fix it for you, so stop looking for excuses or rescue and play the hand you were dealt.
The phrase sounds cruel and Horowitz presents it as the most useful thing anyone said to him. When Loudcloud was collapsing he called Bill Campbell, who told him that when things go wrong nobody cares: all the reasons it is not your fault, all the market conditions, all the bad luck are irrelevant to the people who depend on you, and the only thing that matters is what you are going to do about it. The advice cuts two ways. It removes the comfort of explanation, which founders reach for as the situation worsens. And it removes the fantasy of rescue, the investor, the acquirer or the hire who will arrive and solve it. Horowitz pairs it with a second idea: there are no silver bullets, only lead bullets. The dramatic single fix almost never exists; what exists is a list of unglamorous, difficult things, and the founder's job is to work through them in order.
A real-life example
A founder in Ankara whose main supplier failed spent three weeks explaining to investors why the quarter was lost. When one of them said, kindly, that nobody cared why, he stopped explaining and wrote the lead-bullet list: four alternative suppliers to call, two customers to warn, one price to renegotiate. The list took nine days to work through. The explaining had taken three weeks and produced nothing.
How to use it
- 1When you catch yourself explaining why it is not your fault, stop; the explanation is true and useless. Ask instead what you will do.
- 2Stop waiting for the silver bullet; write the list of lead bullets, the unglamorous fixes and calls, and work through them in order.
- 3Report to the people who depend on you what you are doing, not why it happened.