The subtitle is Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers and the author is Ben Horowitz (2014).
From a super successful Silicon Valley venture capitalist, the book has a lot of similar insights to Peter Thiel's Zero to One. And the title captures best the point of the book and the essence of being an entrepreneur -- it is a struggle to fulfill your dreams. In dialing in on a particular idea (and inspiration) that resonated, it is in the allegorical distinction that he draws between statistics and calculus. That is to say, in an indeterminate world, statistics can help you to measure the odds and conclude that something is not possible. Whereas, if you want to calculate specific things precisely, then calculus is the answer. Horowitz's equates that contrast to how you must approach the inevitable and regular catastrophes that will be confronted in starting a business: "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." That idea dovetails well with another of his pointed insights (a saying similar to one that I make use of in my own dealings): "There is always a move." Lastly, as a simple comment on how markets can behave, his take down of efficient market theory is both elegant and brutal: "No, markets weren't 'efficient' at finding the truth; they were just very efficient at converging on a conclusion -- often the wrong conclusion."
Highly recommended.
