Ghodsi: Launching Databricks one year later in 2014 would have failed
Ali Ghodsi · Ben Horowitz and Ali Ghodsi: How to Run a $100 Billion Business · Oct 15, 2025 · at 57:01
Ali Ghodsi, CEO and co-founder of Databricks, reflects on how precise market timing was essential for Databricks to survive and grow into a $100B enterprise.
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“If we started the company in 2014, a year later instead, so a year later than we actually did, then we would have had our difficult year in 2016. But by 2016, the cloud was starting to happen. AI was starting to happen, you know, so we would have done the fixes in 2017 and it would have been too late to late to the party and probably the hyperscalers would have taken it away. You know, our competitors were taking it away and we just wouldn't have get enough momentum to be able to succeed.”
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