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What you must do after you have screwed up

Idea Almanac

“People always ask me, “What’s the secret to being a successful CEO?” Sadly, there is no secret, but if there is one skill that stands out, it’s the ability to focus and make the best move when there are no good moves. It’s the moments where you feel most like hiding or dying that you can make the biggest difference as a CEO. In the rest of this chapter, I offer some lessons on how to make it through the struggle without quitting or throwing up too much. While most management books focus on how to do things correctly, so you don’t screw up, these lessons provide insight into what you must do after you have screwed up. The good news is, I have plenty of experience at that and so does every other CEO.”

Excerpt From: Ben Horowitz. “The Hard Thing About Hard Things.”

Blue Origin’s business model

Idea Almanac

“While Musk had initially invested $100 million of his own money into SpaceX, the company had also benefited from more than $4 billion in contracts from NASA. By contrast, Bezos was his own NASA, funding Blue Origin almost entirely on his own. He’d joked that Blue Origin’s business model has been, “I sell about $1 billion a year of Amazon stock, and I use it to invest in Blue Origin.” He bought the Washington Post for $250 million in 2013. By contrast, he spent $2.5 billion of his own money on the New Glenn rocket alone, without accepting any government investment.”

Excerpt From: Christian Davenport. “The Space Barons.”

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