Ben Horowitz
16 statements across 2 episodes · 5 bullish · 3 bearish · 2 people on the record · first statement Jan 9, 2025 by Drew Houston · said 28 times in 15 episodes since 2022 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Ben Horowitz's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Lenny Rachitsky (15), Uri Levine (2), Sachin Kansal (2), Anish Acharya (2), Noah Weiss (1), Mike Krieger (1), Matt Mochary (1), Kevin Aluwi (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 8 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
2025 10 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
- The Godmother of AI on jobs, robots & why world models are next | Dr. Fei-Fei Li
- Why Uber’s CPO delivers food on weekends | Sachin Kansal
- Inside the expert network training every frontier AI model | Garrett Lord
- Anthropic's CPO on what comes next | Mike Krieger (co-founder of Instagram)
- How Revolut trains world-class PMs: The “Local CEO” model, raw intellect & building wow products
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
2024 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2023 5 mentions in 4 episodes 1 per episode
- Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf
- Brian Chesky’s new playbook
- The 10 traits of great PMs, AI, and Slack’s approach to product | Noah Weiss (Slack, Google)
- Taxi mafias, cash vaults & 100% MoM growth: The story of SEA’s biggest startup | Kevin Aluwi (Gojek)
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
Everything said about Ben Horowitz, oldest first
Jan 9, 2025 neutral
Houston: Companies fail when founders refuse to delegate or drift too far
“There's this like Ben Horowitz calls it the products, the product CEO paradox where companies, the first way that companies die is from founders not letting go. And so you need to learn to like scale yourself and like hand off your responsibilities and operate…”
Sep 11, 2025
Horowitz: CEOs get no credit for predicting failure, only building solutions
“There, no, from this day on, no credit will be given for predicting rain, only credit for building an arc. And I think that's more true for CEOs than anybody. You know, you have to build an arc. Like, it doesn't matter, like, if you predict you're gonna fail, …”
Sep 11, 2025 bullish
Horowitz bets the current AI boom is not a financial bubble
“Like these businesses are all work and they're being priced appropriately for how they're growing. So that's not an effect. So the thing that you could say is they're not going to keep growing like that or like, and so forth. And I'm not sure about that. Like …”
Sep 11, 2025
Horowitz attends all Flow board meetings to check Adam Neumann's confidence
“Like, I go to all Adam's board meetings, you know, Mark's on the board. I go to all his board meetings because I'm the one who's good at like killing a guy who's that confident. When he's like, okay, that's not your best idea.”
Sep 11, 2025 negative
Sep 11, 2025 negative
Horowitz: Rushing executive hiring causes founder deference and political empire-building
“So the first idea that was wrong was like, okay, build a team of like senior executives, you know, as soon as you get product market fit as fast as possible and they can scale the thing. And I think that you got to build that team slowly and deliberately kind …”
Sep 11, 2025 positive
Horowitz: Invest in world-class strengths rather than lack of weakness
“And one of the things we emphasize inside the firm is to look like we're investing in strength. Not lack of weakness. Like, I want to know, like, how good, like, are they world-class? Do they have a world-class strength? And, you know, can that beat anybody? A…”
Sep 11, 2025 neutral
Horowitz: A market is not in a bubble if everyone thinks it is
“The one thing about bubbles is anytime everybody thinks it's a bubble, it's not a bubble because in order for it to bubble, you need capitulation in that you need kind of everybody to believe it's not a bubble because then the prices really go out of control. …”
Sep 11, 2025
Horowitz: Leaders only add value when making unpopular decisions
“If everybody agrees with the decision, then you didn't add any value because they would have done that without you. So the only value you ever add is when you make a decision that most people don't like and that's where leadership comes in.”
Sep 11, 2025
Horowitz: Relying on formal authority prevents leaders from becoming good CEOs
“The job is fundamentally a leadership job, and it's a tricky leadership job because nobody is actually reporting to you. So, it's like this influence, how do I get people to do what I want, you know, even though I'm not paying them, I can't fire them, I can't …”
Sep 11, 2025 bullish
Sep 11, 2025
Horowitz: Loudcloud went public at 18 months with $2M revenue
“You know, we went public with two million dollars in trailing 12 months revenue at 18 months old, right? Like in the, like, that's obviously a bad idea. I mean, like, there's no question that wasn't a bad idea, but the truth of it was the alternative because w…”
Sep 11, 2025
Sep 11, 2025 bullish
Horowitz refused Databricks' $200K pitch, offering a $10M check instead
“So I said, like, I'm not going to write you a check for 200,000 dollars. I'll write you a check for ten million dollars. Cause like this company, you need to build a company. You need to really go for it if you're going to do this. Otherwise, like you guys sho…”
Sep 11, 2025 positive
Horowitz: Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi decisively fires low-leverage executives
“He's unbelievable at that. As good as anybody I've seen as a guy who's not callous as a CEO, he really cares about the people who work for him. He really wants them to have great careers and all that, but he does not Hesitate, like if he's losing leverage, he'…”
Sep 11, 2025 negative
Horowitz: Superficial VC advice soundbites from podcasts are 'fucking stupid'
“These little snippets of advice that VCs give, because they watch some fucking podcast, are all fucking stupid, like it's just, there's a lot of depth to these things. You have to know the answer to the next question, and the next question”