Ben Horowitz

Founded

Horowitz co-founded and served as president and CEO of the enterprise software company Opsware, which Hewlett-Packard acquired in 2007. Horowitz co-founded Loudcloud in September 1999 with Marc Andreessen, Tim Howes, and In Sik Rhee. Horowitz and Andreessen launched a16z in July 2009 with a $300 million first fund and a service organization modeled partly on talent agencies. Horowitz's operating scars informed recruiting, executive, marketing and board support for founders.

Education

Studied at Columbia University (BA, computer science, 1988) Studied at University of California, Los Angeles (MS, computer science, 1990) Studied at Berkeley High School

Charities

The Horowitz Family Foundation made a $1 million Stanford Medicine gift for COVID-19 testing, prevention and research in California prisons. Felicia Horowitz is publicly identified as founder/CEO and should receive operational attribution; joint family funding does not make every program Ben's personal initiative.

Communities

Horowitz created the a16z Cultural Leadership Fund to connect cultural leaders to technology companies and enable more young African Americans to enter the technology industry. Horowitz and Chris Lyons announced CLF in 2018 with exclusively Black cultural-leader limited partners; its stated goals are portfolio collaboration, Black participation and wealth creation in technology, with all management fees and carry donated to aligned nonprofits. Lyons raised and leads the fund, so it is not a Horowitz-only program.

Awards

Horowitz received the John Jay Award. UCLA's institutional biography records No. 6 on Vanity Fair's 2011 New Establishment list, No. 1 on CNET's 2011 influential-investors list and No. 21 on the 2012 Forbes Midas List. TheFunded separately named him 2011's Most Disruptive investor based on entrepreneur ratings and committee selection.

Family

Horowitz married Felicia Wiley in 1988 and they have three children; he is the son of writer David Horowitz.

More

Reputable public profiles place Horowitz's birth in London in 1966 and upbringing in Berkeley in a politically engaged Jewish family. Public secondary pages disagree on the exact day and month, so the year only is retained. Columbia and UCLA records support a 1988 B.A. and 1990 M.S., both in computer science. His pre-Netscape work included technology and product-marketing roles before he joined Netscape in July 1995. At Netscape he ran product divisions and the directory/security line; at AOL he led the e-commerce platform and Shop@AOL. These were executive operating roles, not founder roles. Loudcloud went public in March 2001 amid the dot-com collapse. Horowitz's first-person account treats the period as a near-death operating experience; the IPO was financing, not a clean founder exit. In August 2002 Loudcloud sold its managed-services business to EDS for $63.5 million cash, retained its automation software, secured a three-year minimum $52 million license arrangement and changed its name and ticker to Opsware/OPSW. The transaction transferred the existing revenue base and concentrated near-term dependence on EDS, making the pivot unusually risky. HP announced a $14.25-per-share cash offer with approximately $1.6 billion enterprise value in July 2007 and closed in September. The value belongs to the company transaction and is not Horowitz's personal proceeds. Horowitz's 2010 signed thesis called Okta a founder-first bet on cloud-native identity and a $10-$20 billion combined identity/management market. He joined the board in February 2010, served as lead independent director, saw the company through its 2017 IPO and resigned in June 2025 without disagreement. Direct governance attribution covers Databricks, Lyft, Okta and Navan. Lyft went public in 2019 and Horowitz left its board in 2020; Navan went public in 2025 and retained him as lead independent director. Databricks remains private, so reported valuations are not exits or realized returns. a16z invested in Jawbone and Horowitz publicly praised its capabilities; Reuters reported liquidation after total financing near $900 million and a peak $3.2 billion valuation. This is a firm-backed loss with strong Horowitz relationship evidence, but exact vehicle checks and his formal board dates remain unverified here. Older institutional biographies listed Horowitz on Caffeine's board, while the current a16z profile does not. The live-streaming company later shut down after raising substantial capital. This is a failed board-linked investment, but exact losses and Horowitz's departure date remain unresolved. Horowitz announced a16z's investment and his board seat in 2019. The company later pivoted and changed leadership; current a16z profile no longer lists the board. No reliable completed exit or final return was established. Horowitz argues that CEOs must expose bad news, use constructive confrontation, distinguish peacetime from wartime leadership and encode culture in repeated actions rather than slogans. These are influential prescriptions drawn from his experience, not universal management rules. Horowitz and Andreessen supported pro-Trump efforts around a stated 'Little Tech' agenda focused on AI, crypto, taxes and regulation. Months later Ben and Felicia Horowitz said they would make a significant donation to entities supporting Harris-Walz because of a decade-long friendship with Harris, while saying a16z's technology-policy position had not changed. Horowitz publicly favors open-source AI, crypto and lighter startup regulation while a16z manages major AI and crypto portfolios. The overlap creates an economic-interest and access concern that should be disclosed; it does not by itself prove improper influence or invalidate the policy arguments.

Mentioned above: the Columbia University mafia → · the UCLA mafia → · the Databricks mafia →

From Ben's own website — common ground for a warm intro.

Intro paths

Co-founders at Anyscale

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Robert NishiharaExecutive Officer, Director

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Philipp MoritzExecutive Officer, Director

Intro paths

Co-founders at Databricks

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Ali GhodsiCo-founder & CEO

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Ion StoicaExecutive Officer, Director, Promoter

MZ

Matei ZahariaExecutive Officer, Director, Promoter

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Reynold XinFounder

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Patrick WendellFounder

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Andy KonwinskiFounder

Intro paths

Co-founders at SignalFx