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Ben Horowitz

Ben Horowitz

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About Ben Horowitz

Ben Horowitz is the co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture capital firms. He's invested in OpenAI, Cursor, and Databricks, and authored "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" on startup leadership.

Career Highlights

  • Andreessen Horowitz (2009-present): Co-founder and General Partner
  • Opsware (1999-2007): Co-founder, sold to HP for $1.6B
  • Loudcloud (1999): Co-founder, survived dot-com crash
  • Netscape (1995-1999): VP/GM of Netscape
  • OpenAI investor: Early backer via a16z
  • Cursor investor: Bet on AI-native coding

Notable Positions

On Hesitation

The deadliest leadership failure:

"The worst thing you can do as a leader is hesitate. Not make a bad decision - hesitate. Things that cause hesitation are when both options are terrible. Should we re-architect and lose a quarter, or ship bad architecture? CEOs avoid the topic entirely."

On Compounding Decisions

The 17 decisions that killed JFK Jr.:

"A pilot told me all plane crashes are a series of bad decisions. JFK Jr's crash wasn't one mistake - it was 17 decisions, each individually defensible, but together lethal. Success works the same way. Nobody writes about those 17 steps."

On Investing in Databricks

Forcing big thinking:

"Six PhDs came asking for $200K. I said no - I'll write $10M. This company needs to build a company. You have to really try. That $200K ask would have doomed them to small thinking. Best part: I didn't know they had a future CEO (Ali Ghodsi) in the company."

On Unpopular Decisions

"The only value you'll ever add are decisions people don't like. If everyone agrees, they'd do it without you."

Key Quotes

  • "Companies that die aren't wrong; they're frozen."
  • "$200K ask → $10M investment."
  • "Run toward fear."