The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

"During this time I learned the most important rule of raising money privately: Look for a market of one. You only need one investor to say yes, so it’s best to ignore the other thirty who say “no.”"

"There are no shortcuts to knowledge, especially knowledge gained from personal experience. Following conventional wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all."

"Watered-down feedback can be worse than no feedback at all because it’s deceptive and confusing to the recipient. But don’t beat them up or attempt to show your superiority. Doing so will defeat your purpose because when done properly, feedback is a dialogue, not a monologue."

"Focus on the road, not the wall. When someone learns to drive a race car, one of the first lessons taught is that when you are going around a curve at 200 mph, do not focus on the wall; focus on the road."

"Startup CEOs should not play the odds. When you are building a company, you must believe there is an answer and you cannot pay attention to your odds of finding it. You just have to find it. It matters not whether your chances are nine in ten or one in a thousand; your task is the same."

"By far the most difficult skill I learned as CEO was the ability to manage my own psychology... The first rule of the CEO psychological meltdown is don’t talk about the psychological meltdown."

"“We take care of the people, the products, and the profits— in that order.” It’s a simple saying, but it’s deep. “Taking care of the people” is the most difficult of the three by far and if you don’t do it, the other two won’t matter. Taking care of the people means that your company is a good place to work. Most workplaces are far from good. As o... See more

"An early lesson I learned in my career was that whenever a large organization attempts to do anything, it always comes down to a single person who can delay the entire project."

"Former secretary of state Colin Powell says that leadership is the ability to get someone to follow you even if only out of curiosity."

"Given this stress, CEOs often make one of the following two mistakes: 1. They take things too personally. 2. They do not take things personally enough."