Quote
“The Struggle is where greatness comes from.”
— Ben Horowitz, in The Hard Thing About Hard Things (2014) · The Hard Thing About Hard Things →
Why it was said
Ben Horowitz writes this in The Hard Thing About Hard Things, in the passage on what he calls the Struggle: the stretch when a founder's vision collides with reality and nothing seems to work. He capitalises the word to mark it as a distinct state rather than a passing bad week.
What it actually means
Horowitz does not romanticise the Struggle. He describes it as lonely, exhausting and full of moments when quitting looks reasonable. The line is not saying that suffering makes you great. It is saying that the decisions that separate strong companies from failed ones get made in exactly those periods, when there are no good options and no one to hand the problem to. If greatness is possible at all, it is found by staying in the room long enough to make those calls. For anyone in a hard stretch, the useful reading is that the difficulty is not proof you are doing it wrong; it may be the job itself.
How to use it
- 1When a hard period starts, write down the decisions that only you can make, and make one of them this week rather than waiting for the pressure to lift.
- 2Tell one trusted person what you are dealing with; a hard stretch carried alone tends to look worse than it is.
- 3Separate 'this is hard' from 'this is wrong' before deciding to quit.