“It’s not easy to openly share your own failures. Arnaud writes about his journey in such a compelling and honest way that he gives the rest of us permission to do the same.”
“How Hard Can It Be is a real page-turner of a book – a fascinating and highly readable account of all the trials, tribulations, pivots, reversals and assorted near disasters involved in launching and monetizing a startup business.”
“In this intimately personal account, the author takes us on a journey through the birth and death of a dream. ‘How Hard Can It Be’ is more than a story of a business venture, it reveals the complexities and messiness of what it means to be human in an enchantingly honest way. A must-read for budding entrepreneurs as well as people interested in life, love and learning.”
“Arnaud captures the emotional roller-coaster of a startup entrepreneurial journey. No amount of “how-to” guides can truly prepare founders for the turbulence, anguish, elation and surprise – all in single day. His personal story brings this to life vividly.”
“Arnaud has managed to convert his entrepreneurial story into a page turner full of lessons. Get ready to learn about the real day to day of startup life.”
“Failure. It’s something that we all try to avoid, yet experience nonetheless. How Hard Can It Be is a book that finally brings failure to the surface, to dissect, examine, and learn from. If you want some clues on how to best metabolize failure – read this book!”
“It takes a lot of courage to share a failure story. Arnaud has done that in great detail. The price he has paid for that failure has turned into a book as a present for you filled with lessons to learn, and more importantly, mistakes to avoid.”
“Learning is the only way to turn failure into success. Arnaud’s story of the ups and downs of his entrepreneurial adventure is full of lessons. He does not glorify failure but treats it with the respect a good teacher deserves. His narrative style is a refreshing new approach to the tired management genre”.
“In professing his failure in a most personal manner, Arnaud asks us to consider why, when the vast majority of startups fail, so few accounts of failing are available. With so much to learn from failing, maybe, just maybe, the time for more failures to step forward and share their experience is upon us.”
The startup stories we are all familiar with tend to end with an oversubscribed IPO and millions of dollars for the founders. You know the drill; the side-hustle, the Unicorns and the rest of it.
But if it was that easy, would not the ever-growing torrent of inspirational stories and the ton of how-to books that flood the internet and fill the self-help sections of bookstores have lead to a lot more ‘successes’? But, here is the thing; numbers don’t lie.
Today, nine startups out of ten fail. That’s right. Irrespective of a startup team’s ideas, talent, funding, hard work or milestones achieved along the way, only 10% of startups make it past the ten years mark.
It is this realization that led me to conclude that to improve the probability of entrepreneurs succeeding, we need less improbable tales of ‘success’ and more real-world startup stories.
How Hard Can It Be compiles well over a decade worth of learnings from startup and scaleup experiences. But How Hard Can It Be is not your typical ‘5 Hacks to Making Zillions after hours’. Instead, it is the behind-the-scenes account of what it really takes to run a tech startup. In reading How Hard Can It Be, my goal is to prepare you for the rough ride that the startup journey is.
In How Hard Can It Be, you will learn (amongst many other things):
Photo Magnus Sundelin @magnus.sundelin
Arnaud Henneville-Wedholm is an entrepreneur, author and possibilist. Today, he leads sales at Furhat Robotics a company known for its most advanced social robot. He is a board advisor to HealthPhy, a physiotherapy-on-demand app.
Arnaud is the founder of multiple startups, including internalDesk, a SaaS platform for enterprise collaboration. internalDesk was recognized as one of the ‘top10 tech rising stars’ in the Nordics in 2014 and was acquired in 2019. Arnaud’s interest areas include entrepreneurship, neuroscience, cognitive science, philosophy and everything related to mindset and longevity. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden with his wife and three children.
Jason Sharman, serial entrepreneur and host of the popular ‘Strap on your boots’ podcast and Arnaud discuss… (in English)
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Sofia Wingren and Filip Strömbäck, hosts of the popular Swedish podcast ‘Rat Race’ sit down with Arnaud… (in English)
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John Livesay, keynote speaker, sales expert and multiple times author sits down with Arnaud…
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Mark Coopersmith professor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the UC Berkeley and bestselling author of “The Other ‘F’ Word has a chat with Arnaud…
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Stephan K. Thieringen, host of the Raw Rants podcast, sits down with Arnaud. They cover quite a few topics…
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