Concept
The Struggle
The Struggle is Ben Horowitz's name for the period, which every great founder goes through, when nothing works and the CEO cannot show the strain. It is not a sign of failure but part of the job.
Horowitz ran Loudcloud through the dot-com collapse and wrote The Hard Thing About Hard Things because, he says, management books describe how to do things right and skip what to do when things go wrong. His chapter on the Struggle is a list of symptoms: you wonder why you started; everybody thinks you are an idiot, but nobody will fire you; you cannot sleep, and everything you built looks like a mistake. His point in naming it is that every great entrepreneur goes through it, and that the worst response is to conclude that it means something about you. His practical advice is spare. Do not carry it alone; involve the team, because more brains work on a problem the team can see. Focus on the road, not the wall, the way a racing driver does. And, in his words, the Struggle is where greatness comes from. Our reading is that it is where the hard decisions get made, not that suffering is noble.
A real-life example
A founder in Istanbul, eight months after launch, had a churned anchor customer, a co-founder on the way out and a payroll due in two weeks. Reading the chapter, she recognised every symptom, and the recognition itself changed something: she stopped treating the situation as evidence that she was the wrong person and started treating it as the job. She told the team the numbers that week. Two of them found the customer that replaced the anchor.
How to use it
- 1When you are in it, name it out loud: this is the Struggle, everyone gets it, and it is not a verdict on you.
- 2Do not carry it alone; put the problem in front of the team, because a problem they can see is a problem more people are solving.
- 3Focus on the road, not the wall: the next decision, not the catalogue of everything that is wrong.