What is Reddit's opinion of The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

The Hard Things About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz would be a useful book to be sure that the life or reality is often way harder than it is explained in business books. It is a useful reading for business owners in general.

Ask him to read The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz http://www.amazon.com/The-Hard-Thing-About-Things/dp/0062273205

It is a good book about management and especially for the role of a CEO

He needs to understand that 1-2% of something is more that 100% of nothing.In your friend's situation, he is abandoning his startup and moving on to the new job the question he needs to answer is how big is the market for his current startup and what is the upside potential.

Compare this upside vs the job and then decide.

I loved inspired - the biggest takeaway from me was the '4 big risks' and how product must own value and viability, and UX owns usability risk, and tech owns feasibility. I use this concept a lot at work to draw boundaries, hold other accountable, and mentor new PMs on my team (I find that this is the best way to wrangle in the 'super hero' PM who tries to do everyone's job, without hurting that PM's passion).

Anyways, when I read a book, I expect to find 2-3 good things; I don't expect every page to be filled with wisdom. The only Product/Business book I've found to be an exception is The Hard Thing About Hard Things.

Hi! ive been of those 8k users, nearly from the beginning, i didnt know the app was that new, i think i caught you on product hunt.

First of all its really good! so congratulations on that, it does what you expect it to do haha

Ive almost never had any issues with exporting to webm because most of what i do with these recordings is share them on slack or discord for work reasons and both apps can handle webm perfectly well...BUT

just last week i tried exporting to mp4 and to my surprise i had to pay a monthly subscription which to me was an automatic no no, to be perfectly honest i dont believe that a screen recording app needs a subscription model, also not saying it should be free though.

Im a software engineer myself with experience working on startups and building products, so here are my 2 cents:

- Whatever you decide to do, id allocate some budget on marketing and ads, exposure is key

- One time payment should be a pretty good model, maybe lower the price to a more "classic" figure ie. 49,99 69,99 sth like that

- Ultimately your decision, but i completely agree with u/EastNeither, removing free features is a big f-u to your end user. Customers should be treated almost as royalty haha

>"Take care of the people, the product and the profit. In that order" link

- Right now you have the ability of splitting features from the pro version, maybe offering a monthly subscription fee for cloud services, think of Loom, their app is free but the hosting, private sharing, analytics etc requires a subscription.

- Personal opinion, I believe that an app should be an extension of a service, so Id focus on creating more value on that part, for example, off the top of my head, adding the ability to have a "feed", so imagine this, in a work environment i share a video link to you about whatever and you can comment on that, then reply with another video, maybe use the same one that i sent you but with annotations or sth

- If youre going with anything cloud based, even with the model that you offer atm, focus on privacy, privacy, privacy, privacy, privacy, privacy...and privacy haha

Your real clients are going to be businesses that get 50-100 licenses for their team, and if they are worthy of their name, the first thing that they are going to ask you is how do you handle data, what you do with it, who can access it etc etc. Actually, this is one of the reasons why i did not subscribe, Im bound by an NDA (pretty basic tbh) that prevents me from sharing videos of the product on the cloud on any service other than the authorized by the company (only allowed service is Loom, which i dont like haha) so a local solution is perfect for me and to a lot of people i imagine.

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Please dont stop with this project, i really believe in creating something from the ground up and owning it to the point of frustration, joy, accomplishment, call it what you want haha

on a separate note, i recommend you read this and checkout savvycal, a fully bootstrapped product by one guy, now i believe the team has grown but he took the company to a pretty amazing level by himself, this is the guy

Dont hesitate on contacting me if you have questions or if you believe i could help you or the product in any way.

good luck!

On the business front:

• The Hard Thing About Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz. Because business doesn't always go to plan (https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205)
• The E-Myth Revisited, by Michael Gerber. The shift from technician to business owner, plus I like pies (https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About/dp/0887307280/)
• Traction, by Gabriel Weinberg. There are a few books with this title - this one focus on a wide range of marketing strategies (https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Customer/dp/0241242533/)
• Cashflow Quadrant, by Robert Kiyosaki. Kiyosaki is (fairly justifiably) criticised and lampooned, plus you can basically get the gist of this whole book by reading a 1 page summary online, but it's a useful framework for shifting perspective and I like to acknowledge my sources (https://www.amazon.com/Rich-Dads-CASHFLOW-Quadrant-Financial/dp/1612680054/)
• The Start-up Business Guide, by Jacob Aldridge. AKA 'The 50 First Steps every successful entrepreneur completes in their first year', I'm pretty proud of this distillation of my 15 years business advisory experience, so trust you will excuse the self-promotion at the end of this list (https://www.amazon.com/Start-up-Business-Guide-Successful-Completes/dp/0648762203/)

Get back to me when you have some experience. https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205

There are certain things you don't do, and one is publicly cave to real or unreal threats.

In theory what you say makes sense. in practice, so many things won't go as you expect. Murphy's law is a real thing. and the paretto principle just as relevant.
I must warn you about premature optimization, as should be well known premature optimization is the root of all evil. I recommend designing the prototype for learning and replacement. Keep an open mind about rebuilding the cathedral if necessary. Prototype is not a product, it is a discovery tool so you can communicate to a potential customer and keep asking why and honing in till you find a value you can offer and they will be willing to pay for.

you also need to discover what are your capital requirements, and the business model. Steve Blank said that 'a startup is a temporarily organization searching for a business model'. I think there is plenty of truth in that, but it is not the whole truth.
Realistically, much of what can be discussed here will remain theoretical till it is more tangible for you. from what you said, and your employment contract, I would check if there are any restrictions which would prevent you from prototyping your idea. if that is clear, then go ahead and do so while educating yourself. If you know someone you trust who fits the persona of the potential users of your product, you should discuss with them and ask them for feedback once you have a prototype.
From the little I know, I would say try doing as much as legally possibly while employed and save up the cash. you will need it.
I would like to say that I have observed when it comes to product there is a scale that goes from "totally convinced/committed" to "no clue if anyone cares". As technical people, we are more prone to be closer to "totally convinced" end of the scale, which is not necessarily bad but could result in tunnel vision, distortion of market realities , etc. These are blind spots which means that necessary precautions must be taken to mitigate those risks.

if you are closer to the other end of the spectrum, you will have to find ways to mitigate the risks from that. I am not close to that spectrum, but I suspect the main risk is lack of conviction which means lower passion for the product which means you will run out of steam quick in a harsh environment like a startup.

I recommend reading about lateral thinking and strategies but be picky about the references you will invest your time in.

Ben Horowitz's The hard thing about hard things should be on your reading list. you might get scared, and that is totally ok and then it is not for you. but it does depict many of what startup founders go through fairly accurately.

>Creating a job isn't a good thing. It is just a symptom of the system that jobs need to be created. In socialism, jobs are there to be done, and people are there to do them.

I want you to read this again but think of yourself as a capitalist. Calling it a symptom doesn't make your argument. Socialism creates unnecessary jobs and capitalism creates jobs that benefit people.

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>Any other business would fail, but because it's propped up by the billionaires and the corporate government, it is allowed to live at the expense of the working class. I hate the market, but this stands against your principles.

Most business don't make a profit for years. Its propped up by billionaires because its an investments (why would they spend their money on something that doesn't give them more money back?), and a majority investments end up losing money for the investors. I am totally against the gov helping out corporations, but you need to understand that this is Crony Capitalism, not capitalism.

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> They don't work

LMFAO ok tell that to them when they worked 100 hour weeks.

It takes insane amounts of highly skilled labor to even create a slightly successful company. Read I doubt you would, but I think it would give you a new view point.

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> they manipulate money

elaborate

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> risk is another symptom. No one gains simply from risk, they gain from the products of that, if they come. They should be compensated not for risk, but for success. Success is the only think which should yield the products of success.

There is a risk that you wont be successful - hope that clarifies

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> That's because all the big corporations raping their asses

Through competitive prices not because

> They bribe politicians and use their massive size to simply get rid of any competition

This again is crony capitalism but this rarely happens in the current system, it is more effective to under cut the small business. There are antitrust laws that stops large corporations engaging in fraudulent business practices. Having an regulated monopoly neither promotes innovation or is allocatively efficient. Most companies don't lobby, only companies that depend on it, like gas companies, so the gov doesn't screw them up.

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>Yeah, rely upon the very corporatist overlords you're trying to overthrow.

The sellers on there are mostly small business. The website is profitable because people trust able.

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>Even if they did, it requires a fucking ton to even stand a chance against a corporation's mere glance.

No it doesn't. Corporations variable costs, fixed costs, and marginal costs are far higher than small companies. Small companies can undercut them if they produce the right amount.

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>People aren't going to live like shit for something which probably won't even work and will end up backfiring.

The billionaires and millionaires today lived like shit for something that probably won't even work, but hey they are lazy pigs right?

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> Even if it did succeed, lots of people would die before that happened.

The US provides a shit ton of assistance to the poor. If they die its because of an outside source or old age.

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>You can't destroy the system by playing by its rules. Its rules are there to keep it in place and to keep its benefactors in power.

Your debating not rallying up your comrades

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I would suggest you take business classes or even just watch a few youtube videos on how to run a business and it might give you an insight on why there are so many stupid capitalists.

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I'd recommend reading The Effective Manager or maybe start with their podcasts to see if you like the advise. Manger Tools While it wasn't mind blowing for me, it was at least a starting point when I was starting from zero. In the book they do get into giving feedback that will produce results and it's been very helpful for me. Concentrate on positive feedback and use it to lead into things you would like to see changed/improved. Don't just hit them with negative feedback all the time. Avoid the shit sandwich though; positive feedback-negative feedback-positive feedback, people catch on to this quick.

One-on-one meetings with your direct reports are crucial. These meetings are not about you, they are about your direct. They allow you to establish a rapport with your direct.

Good how-to books on management are hard to come by. Sometimes you just need to listen/read other content and pull some useful tidbits from it. I just finished The Hard Thing About Hard Things and was able to pull some useful things out of it.

Last but not least, be a human being.

There's a million things most people on this sub could recommend, and really the learning never stops.

Here are some good starting points:

The Hard Thing About Hard Things - Ben Horowitz

Zero to One - Peter Thiel

The Personal MBA - Josh Kaufman

The Four Hour Work Week - Tim Ferris

Ehh not too much. I suggest reading the book The Hard Thing About Hard Things