Ben Horowitz
Co-Founder and General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz · 89 appearances on the record.
computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →
investorfounderexecutiveauthor@bhorowitz ↗LinkedIn ↗a16z.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Horowitz co-founded and served as CEO of Opsware, leading it to a $1.6 billion acquisition by Hewlett-Packard in 2007. In 2009, he co-founded the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz alongside Marc Andreessen and authored bestselling business books.
58 supported 50 partly supported 33 contradicted 11 not yet assessed 198 not checkable as stated how the 351 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
62 predictions · 289 assertions · 163 opinions · 250 insights · 61 disclosures · 10 what ifs · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 351 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 142 are resolved, 11 are not yet assessed, and 198 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Ben argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Their most notable supported claim
Their most notable contradicted claim
Expressed certainty vs assessment result
weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet
Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →
answered every one of 29 assessed questions directly
This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →
How they sound: speaking style how? →
252 words/min while actually speaking · 30.7 um and uh per 1k words · 17.4 false starts per 1k · 34.6% of pauses land inside a clause
Um and uh per 1,000 words, year by year. Hover a point for the year's tape.
Measured by listening to the audio itself: 262,653 words across 76 episodes of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →
Everything Ben Horowitz said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
The other half of the tape: Ben Horowitz's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 154 times in 72 episodes on the a16z Podcast. 15 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Marc Andreessen 25Martin Casado 8Scott Cooper 7Margit Wennmachers 6Brian Koppelman 6Alex Rampell 6Sonal Chokshi 5J.D. Vance 4
Statements about Ben Horowitz, by other people (15)
Every mention by year
2026 26 mentions in 10 episodes 3 per episode
- Marc Andreessen's 2026 Outlook: AI Timelines, US vs. China, and The Price of AI
- Inside The Life of Silicon Valley's First Athlete Investor | Magic Johnson
- How AI Changes the Economics of Innovation
- The AI Opportunity that goes beyond Models
- The State of AI: Models, Moats, and the Consumer Renaissance
- The Opportunity for Global Founders
- How Whatnot's Live Shopping Beats Traditional E-Commerce
- How Decagon Runs 90% of Its Agents on Open-Source Models
- 2 more episodes that year, every mention in 2026 →
2025 36 mentions in 18 episodes 2 per episode
- Marc Andreessen Reveals His Biggest Wins and Mistakes at a16z
- JD Vance on the Future of America
- Why Creativity Will Matter More Than Code | Kevin Rose and Anish Acharya
- The Person Who Runs HR For 2 Million Federal Workers
- The Little Tech Agenda for AI
- Sovereign AI: Why Nations Are Building Their Own Models
- The Unicorn Founder Who Delegated Everything.
- Robinhood CEO: Making Everyone An Owner
- 10 more episodes that year, every mention in 2025 →
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2023 5 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
2020 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 64 mentions in 32 episodes 2 per episode
- a16z Podcast | For the Billions of Creatives Out There
- a16z Podcast | Creating a Category, from Pricing to Positioning
- a16z Podcast | Startups and Pendulum Swings Through Ideas, Time, Fame, and Money
- a16z Podcast | Investing in (Business and Career) Change
- a16z Podcast | What Makes the Valley Work
- a16z Podcast | Managing Uncertainty -- Layoffs and Talent
- a16z Podcast | The Best Way To Be Smart ... Is To Not Be Stupid
- a16z Podcast | Raising Money and Valuing Startups -- What Happens When Things Don't Go As Planned?
- 24 more episodes that year, every mention in 2019 →
2018 16 mentions in 4 episodes 4 per episode
2017 4 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
Appearances (89)
Played on the show (2)
Episodes where a recording of Ben Horowitz was played rather than Ben taking part, or where the tape carries an address with nobody putting questions to them. Listed because the words are on the record, kept out of every score on this page because they were not said on this show. We read this off the tape: who was spoken to, who was asked something, who answered whom.
| Episode | Date | On tape | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| a16z Podcast | Hall of Fame Football Meets Venture Capital | Jan 2, 2019 | 1m | clip played |
| Don't Follow Your Passion | Jul 15, 2017 | 13m | aired address |