@StartupArchive_: Marc Andreessen on handling a crisis: “There are no silver bullets, only lead bullets” Marc reflects on his partner Ben…

Marc Andreessen on handling a crisis: “There are no silver bullets, only lead bullets” Marc reflects on his partner Ben Horowitz’s essay “Lead Bullets”: “There’s this temptation - especially when you get into crisis - to think there must be a magic answer or some stroke of genius [similar to Sherlock Holmes]…. There’s this really strong tendency to think that that’s out there. And we see a lot of entrepreneurs cycle through different silver bullets that don’t work. Ben’s point is the answer is probably in firing a whole bunch of lead bullets.” Marc explains: “The answer is probably the engineers working later at night for six months and getting the next version of the product out. And the answer is probably for the sales reps to go call on twice as many customers and try to close more deals… I’ve certainly come around to that point of view a lot.” In other words, there rarely a silver bullet that solves all your problems. So don’t waste a lot of time looking for one. Instead, identify the few key drivers of success for your business and do them extremely well. Here’s a brief excerpt from Ben’s essay: “There may be nothing scarier in business than facing an existential threat. So scary that many in the organization will do anything to avoid it. They will look for any alternative, any way out, any excuse not to live or die in a single battle… There comes a time in every company’s life where it must fight for its life. If you find yourself running when you should be fighting, you need to ask yourself: ‘If our company isn’t good enough to win, then do we need to exist at all?’” Source: @StanfordGSB (Mar 2014)