Ben Horowitz

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

by Ben Horowitz  · 4 Mar 2014  · 270pp  · 79,068 words

entire strategy to the publication Computer Reseller News. I was livid. I immediately sent him a short email: To: Marc Andreessen Cc: Mike Homer From: Ben Horowitz Subject : Launch I guess we’re not going to wait until the 5th to launch the strategy. — Ben Within fifteen minutes, I received the following

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reply. To: Ben Horowitz Cc: Mike Homer, Jim Barksdale (CEO), Jim Clark (Chairman) From: Marc Andreessen Subject: Re: Launch Apparently you do not understand how serious the situation is

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heard you loud and clear. This is a terrible moment for you and for us. Allow me to use your phone, and I will call Ben Horowitz and give him your instructions. But before I do, can I ask you one thing? If my company made the commitment to fix these issues

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board of a very scary company. Finally, thank you, Boochie, Red, and Boogie, for being the best children that I could imagine. ABOUT THE AUTHOR BEN HOROWITZ is the cofounder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley–based venture capital firm that invests in entrepreneurs building the next generation of

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secured. Used by permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation and Alfred Music Publishing. COPYRIGHT THE HARD THING ABOUT HARD THINGS. Copyright © 2014 by Ben Horowitz. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to

The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future

by Sebastian Mallaby  · 1 Feb 2022  · 935pp  · 197,338 words

from a surprising quarter. In early 2009, Marc Andreessen, the Netscape founder and Facebook board member, launched a venture firm together with a fellow Netscapee, Ben Horowitz. Like other splashy new entrants—Accel in the 1980s, Benchmark in the 1990s, Founders Fund in 2005—the new Andreessen Horowitz sought to differentiate itself

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ownership group featured Bob Kagle, the Benchmark partner who had invested in eBay, and Mark Stevens, a longtime stalwart at Sequoia. Its regular fans included Ben Horowitz, co-founder of a16z, and Ron Conway, the super-angel who had backed Google. And this fusing of sports and technology finance operated in two

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chaos. Peter Barris of NEA saw how UUNET could become the new GE Information Services. John Doerr persuaded the Googlers to work with Eric Schmidt. Ben Horowitz steered Nicira and Okta through their formative moments. To be sure, stories of venture capitalists guiding portfolio companies may exaggerate VCs’ importance: in at least

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a later blog post, Horowitz listed no fewer than twenty-four long-lived technology firms whose founders had remained at the helm for years. See Ben Horowitz, “Why We Prefer Founding CEOs,” Andreessen Horowitz, April 28, 2010, a16z.com/2010/04/28/why-we-prefer-founding-ceos. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 39

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and launches Sequoia China. 2009 Yuri Milner makes a growth investment in Facebook, offering tech founders a way of delaying IPOs. 2009 Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz form a venture partnership, quickly becoming industry leaders. 2010 Sequoia China backs Meituan, which later surpasses Google as the most profitable bet in Sequoia’s

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the global social-media business. The resulting $300 million investment in Facebook made Milner a Valley celebrity and quickly inspired imitators. Marc Andreessen (left) and Ben Horowitz (right) launched a new venture partnership in 2009, immediately vaulting into the top tier. Big characters with big reputations as coders and entrepreneurs, they rode

Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It

by Scott Kupor  · 3 Jun 2019  · 340pp  · 100,151 words

revered cofounder of Netscape, LoudCloud was trying to create a compute utility (much like Amazon Web Services has now created). Among the other cofounders was Ben Horowitz. This was the fall of 1999, and the dot-com excitement was in full swing. I had finally opened my eyes to what was happening

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me, and I wanted to be a part of it. When my friend at E.piphany offered me the chance to meet Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz and see what they were doing, it was too much to pass up. My wife, who was about five months pregnant at the time with

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can appeal to a mass-market audience. After meeting with Marc, I also interviewed with a number of other members of the team, including cofounder Ben Horowitz. The setting for that interview was more normal, as we met on a Saturday at the company’s offices. But I remember being surprised by

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of power between entrepreneurs and VCs. Something More And that takes us to the founding of Andreessen Horowitz, started in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. What Marc and Ben saw was this fundamental shift in the landscape that would no longer make access to capital alone a sufficient differentiator for

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to adopt. (Of course, “ten times” here is just a heuristic, but the point is that marginal differences won’t get people off the couch.) Ben Horowitz uses the difference between a vitamin and an aspirin to articulate this point. Vitamins are nice to have; they offer some potential health benefits, but

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prior round of financing in September 1999 was $21 million at a $66 million valuation. We were feeling pretty good about this as our CEO (Ben Horowitz) and I were preparing to host an all-hands meeting to discuss the results of the raise. But rather than ride off into the sunset

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firm is a huge one, and my personal motto about most things is Better to be informed. The Evolution of VC When Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz started Andreessen Horowitz, they were contemplating building a different type of venture firm from those already in the market. In particular, we decided to hire

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of definitive agreements. COMPANY XYZ, INC. VENTURE CAPITAL FUND I, L.P. By: By: Name: Name: Title: Title: Date: Date: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS When Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz reached out to me in 2008 to ask if I would join them on the a16z journey, I have to admit that I hesitated. I

Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley

by Jacob Silverman  · 9 Oct 2025  · 312pp  · 103,645 words

turned on the money spigot for Trump, the Trump assassination attempt and Vance’s ascension prompted them to fully open the tap. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who headed the highly influential VC firm bearing their names, announced on their podcast that they would be donating to pro-Trump PACs. Following the

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aspirations; MBS offered his own consultant-approved economic development plan known as Vision 2030. The two sides had much in common. “Saudi has a founder,” Ben Horowitz said at a 2023 tech conference featuring Saudi government representatives. “You don’t call him a founder. You call him his royal highness.”6 Saudi

Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble

by Dan Lyons  · 4 Apr 2016  · 284pp  · 92,688 words

Valley try to make for them, selecting “college dropouts with insane ideas going after tiny markets with no idea how to monetize,” as venture capitalist Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz once put it. At one time, venture capitalists who invested in a tech start-up with a young founder would insist on

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much as $100 million, while his investor and co-founder, Jim Clark, made $2 billion.) In 2009 Andreessen and his friend and former business partner Ben Horowitz launched Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z, as it is known. (The name is a “numeronym,” a way of shortening a word or phrase by using a

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grew up in Berkeley, and his father is David Horowitz, a well-known author and conservative commentator. As the tech blog Valleywag summed it up, “Ben Horowitz Is Desperate for You to Think He’s Cool.” Andreessen and Wennmachers assiduously court the press. Andreessen has even invested in online publications that cover

Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money

by Nathaniel Popper  · 18 May 2015  · 387pp  · 112,868 words

attracted interest from venture capitalists who were still queasy about tying their firms to Bitcoin. Both of the founders of Andreessen Horowitz, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, signed up to put some of their own personal money into Balaji’s project, as did several of the original founders of PayPal, including Peter

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invited to an exclusive party hosted by Andreessen Horowitz. At the party, which was attended by celebrities like Ashton Kutscher, Ehrsam talked about Bitcoin with Ben Horowitz and the rapper, Nas, whom Horowitz had brought on as an investor in Coinbase. The big names like Horowitz at SXSW reiterated what world-changing

The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator, Silicon Valley's Most Exclusive School for Startups

by Randall Stross  · 4 Sep 2013  · 332pp  · 97,325 words

, no! But we’re not!’ Because what they really mean is, ‘We don’t like the way you look.’” Knox says, “You said it, but Ben Horowitz, I think, also said it: ‘Listen to the answer, don’t listen to the reason.’ So, no is no. Got it.” “So who knows?” Graham

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from Andreessen Horowitz. Marc Andreessen composed the announcement, which, fittingly, was posted and annotated on Rap Genius’s Web site. He observed that his partner Ben Horowitz was “a noted rap fanatic,” but more important, Andreessen was gripped by the idea of annotating the entire world, creating “the Internet Talmud.”2 Taking

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World,” Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903480904576512250915629460.html. Andreessen devotes the essay to illustrating the phrase. Andreessen’s partner, Ben Horowitz, mentioned the phrase briefly two months earlier in an essay that challenged the contention that “we are in a new tech bubble,” in an online

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debate hosted by The Economist: Ben Horowitz, “Against the Motion,” The Economist, June 14, 2011, www.economist.com/debate/days/view/710. 3. PG described his reaction to the Y Combinator function

Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success

by Tom Eisenmann  · 29 Mar 2021  · 387pp  · 106,753 words

members of the venture’s original management team—possibly including the founder/CEO—now lack the knowledge and skills to lead their units successfully. As Ben Horowitz, co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, puts it, “Managing at scale is a learned skill rather than a natural ability. Nobody comes

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complaints. Resolving these problems reduced Dot & Bo’s profit margin, causing the company to burn through its capital faster than expected. Shared Values Venture capitalist Ben Horowitz defines company culture as how employees make decisions when their boss isn’t there. In a company with a strong culture, employees “just know” what

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company managers, he was a master at obfuscation; he could massage numbers to make things look like they were working.” Echoing these points, venture capitalist Ben Horowitz warns that a management style honed in big organizations may be perceived as “too political” by a startup’s leaders. Horowitz also notes that many

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the many practitioners whose trailblazing ideas about startup management shaped my thinking in profound ways. Foremost among them are Steve Blank, Paul Graham, Reid Hoffman, Ben Horowitz, Geoffrey Moore, Eric Ries, Peter Thiel, and Fred Wilson. I’m likewise beholden to the founders who shared the stories that this book is built

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and Organizational Issues,” HBS course note 812100, Jan. 2012 (Feb. 2012 rev.). Other perspectives on human capital management challenges in scaling startups are available in Ben Horowitz, The Hard Thing about Hard Things (New York: HarperCollins, 2014); Hoffman and Yeh, Blitzscaling, Part IV; Blumberg, Startup CEO, Part 2; Sam Altman, “Later Stage

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Management System to Work for Startups—Here It Is,” First Round Review website, which interviews Max Ventilla, who discusses adapting OKRs to startups. Venture capitalist Ben Horowitz defines: Ben Horowitz, What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture (New York: HarperCollins, 2019). For additional perspectives on managing a scaling

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Broadband Explosion: Leading Thinkers on the Promise of a Truly Interactive World (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2005). Echoing these points: See two posts by Ben Horowitz: “Old People,” Andreessen Horowitz blog, December 5, 2012, and “Why Is It Hard to Bring Big Company Execs into Little Companies?” Business Insider website, Apr

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. 12, 2014. Selling the Company: For additional perspective on selling a startup, see Chris Dixon, “Notes on the Acquisition Process,” cdixon blog, Sept. 10, 2012; Ben Horowitz, “Should You Sell Your Company?” Andreessen Horowitz blog, Jan. 19, 2011; Chris Sheehan, “Corporate Development 101: What Every Startup Should Know,” OnStartups blog, Apr. 2

Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups

by Ali Tamaseb  · 14 Sep 2021  · 251pp  · 80,831 words

you think. One final note: while doing this research I could not help but notice the lack of diversity among these founding teams. Inspired by Ben Horowitz, I will donate proceeds from this book to nonprofits and charitable causes that help with upward social mobility and diversity. CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION A

Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

by Hamish McKenzie  · 30 Sep 2017  · 307pp  · 90,634 words

thing in common with Steve Jobs: He is a wartime CEO. Such leaders preside over their companies when they face an imminent existential threat, says Ben Horowitz, a Silicon Valley investor and partner with Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen in the celebrated venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The wartime CEO’s companies depend

The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World

by Brad Stone  · 30 Jan 2017  · 373pp  · 112,822 words

The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset That Drives Extraordinary Results

by Andrew McAfee  · 14 Nov 2023  · 381pp  · 113,173 words

On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything

by Nate Silver  · 12 Aug 2024  · 848pp  · 227,015 words

Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Alan Eagle  · 15 Apr 2019  · 199pp  · 56,243 words

An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination

by Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang  · 12 Jul 2021  · 372pp  · 100,947 words

How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success From the World's Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs

by Guy Raz  · 14 Sep 2020  · 361pp  · 107,461 words

The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World

by Max Fisher  · 5 Sep 2022  · 439pp  · 131,081 words

System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot

by Rob Reich, Mehran Sahami and Jeremy M. Weinstein  · 6 Sep 2021

Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy

by George Gilder  · 16 Jul 2018  · 332pp  · 93,672 words

The Startup Way: Making Entrepreneurship a Fundamental Discipline of Every Enterprise

by Eric Ries  · 15 Mar 2017  · 406pp  · 105,602 words

Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution

by Fred Vogelstein  · 12 Nov 2013  · 275pp  · 84,418 words

The Airbnb Story: How Three Ordinary Guys Disrupted an Industry, Made Billions...and Created Plenty of Controversy

by Leigh Gallagher  · 14 Feb 2017  · 290pp  · 87,549 words

Facebook: The Inside Story

by Steven Levy  · 25 Feb 2020  · 706pp  · 202,591 words

Masters of Scale: Surprising Truths From the World's Most Successful Entrepreneurs

by Reid Hoffman, June Cohen and Deron Triff  · 14 Oct 2021  · 309pp  · 96,168 words

The End of Jobs: Money, Meaning and Freedom Without the 9-To-5

by Taylor Pearson  · 27 Jun 2015  · 168pp  · 50,647 words

Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers

by Timothy Ferriss  · 6 Dec 2016  · 669pp  · 210,153 words

The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

by Scott Belsky  · 1 Oct 2018  · 425pp  · 112,220 words

How Boards Work: And How They Can Work Better in a Chaotic World

by Dambisa Moyo  · 3 May 2021  · 272pp  · 76,154 words

Dual Transformation: How to Reposition Today's Business While Creating the Future

by Scott D. Anthony and Mark W. Johnson  · 27 Mar 2017  · 293pp  · 78,439 words

Exponential Organizations: Why New Organizations Are Ten Times Better, Faster, and Cheaper Than Yours (And What to Do About It)

by Salim Ismail and Yuri van Geest  · 17 Oct 2014  · 292pp  · 85,151 words

The Middleman Economy: How Brokers, Agents, Dealers, and Everyday Matchmakers Create Value and Profit

by Marina Krakovsky  · 14 Sep 2015  · 270pp  · 79,180 words

More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity

by Adam Becker  · 14 Jun 2025  · 381pp  · 119,533 words

Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century

by W. David Marx  · 18 Nov 2025  · 642pp  · 142,332 words

The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America

by Margaret O'Mara  · 8 Jul 2019

Upscale: What It Takes to Scale a Startup. By the People Who've Done It.

by James Silver  · 15 Nov 2018  · 291pp  · 90,771 words

Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success

by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown  · 24 Apr 2017  · 344pp  · 96,020 words

Googled: The End of the World as We Know It

by Ken Auletta  · 1 Jan 2009  · 532pp  · 139,706 words

Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life

by Ozan Varol  · 13 Apr 2020  · 389pp  · 112,319 words

Conflicted: How Productive Disagreements Lead to Better Outcomes

by Ian Leslie  · 23 Feb 2021  · 280pp  · 82,393 words

Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal, and Redemption

by Ben Mezrich  · 20 May 2019  · 304pp  · 91,566 words

Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

by Tony Fadell  · 2 May 2022  · 411pp  · 119,022 words

If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All

by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares  · 15 Sep 2025  · 215pp  · 64,699 words

MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World

by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams  · 28 Sep 2010  · 552pp  · 168,518 words

Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster

by Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz  · 1 Mar 2013  · 567pp  · 122,311 words

An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management

by Will Larson  · 19 May 2019  · 227pp  · 63,186 words

Startupland: How Three Guys Risked Everything to Turn an Idea Into a Global Business

by Mikkel Svane and Carlye Adler  · 13 Nov 2014  · 220pp

Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business, + Website

by Matt Blumberg  · 13 Aug 2013  · 561pp  · 114,843 words

Ego Is the Enemy

by Ryan Holiday  · 13 Jun 2016  · 177pp  · 54,421 words

The Four: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Divided and Conquered the World

by Scott Galloway  · 2 Oct 2017  · 305pp  · 79,303 words

User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product

by Jeff Patton and Peter Economy  · 14 Apr 2014  · 289pp  · 80,763 words

The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future

by Andrew Yang  · 2 Apr 2018  · 300pp  · 76,638 words