What do I do when the company is in trouble?
Face the facts, identify what is at risk and compare your choices with accounts from founders who faced pressure.
The selection and reasons are the library’s guidance. Founder connections and examples have separate source links.
Three books to consider
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
Work through decisions where there is no painless choice.
Ben Horowitz · Author
Horowitz draws on his own experience leading companies and making difficult management decisions.
SourceOnly the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company
Examine whether a change threatens the assumptions behind the business.
Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike
See the uncertainty and pressure inside a company that later became successful.
Short writing
Changes to Shopify’s team ↗
Lütke takes responsibility for a growth bet that failed and explains the workforce reduction that followed. The letter is signed by him.
1985 Chairman’s Letter ↗
“Shutdown of Textile Business” — the postmortem on the mill he bought control of twenty years earlier, opened by Munger’s rule that you learn more from studying errors than successes.
A founder example
Buying a company to keep a major customer
An account from The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers, as discussed in the source below.
- Decision
- How to protect a customer worth $20 million a year.
- Action
- Horowitz bought a company for $10 million to help retain the account.
- Outcome
- The acquisition helped retain the account, as recounted in the book discussion.
23:16