Ben Horowitz

Benjamin Horowitz is a co-founder and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, a well-known venture capital firm. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" and "What You Do Is Who You Are." He also initiated the a16z Cultural Leadership Fund, which aims to connect distinguished cultural leaders to the most promising new technology companies, and to facilitate the entry of more African Americans into the tech industry.

Before his time at Andreessen Horowitz, Horowitz co-founded and was CEO of Opsware, which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2007 for $1.6 billion. Following the acquisition, he was named vice president and general manager of Business Technology Optimization for Software at HP. His earlier roles include vice president and general manager of America Online’s E-commerce Platform division, overseeing the development of Shop@AOL. Before AOL, he held several significant positions at Netscape Communications, including vice president of the Directory and Security product line, and various senior product marketing roles at Lotus Development Corporation.

Horowitz earned a BA in Computer Science from Columbia University and an MS in Computer Science from UCLA. He currently serves on the boards of several companies, including Anyscale, Caffeine, Databricks, Foursquare, Jawbone, Lytro, Magnet, Mayvenn, Medium, NationBuilder, Nicira, Okta ($OKTA), Sisu, Tanium, Tidemark, TripActions, and UnitedMasters. He also runs a blog, "Ben's Blog," where he shares insights on topics such as executive hiring strategies and reducing company politics.