Ben Horowitz
Co-Founder and General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz · 1 appearance on the record.
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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.
24statements → 5claims → 3claims resolved → 100%fully supported → 4.08/5average certainty → 2.17/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 12said about them ↓
3 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 2 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
5 assertions · 1 opinion · 13 insights · 5 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, and 2 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
Horowitz: Flock Safety Cameras Caught Las Vegas Tesla Arsonist
“And actually, that's how they caught, interestingly, the Tesla terrorists who set the, Tesla ship on fire in Las Vegas was he came in earlier to case the place. Flock safety pick up the car. They saw the car come back at night and they were like, oh, we know w…”
How they sound: not measured why? →
We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Ben Horowitz on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Ben Horowitz said on My First Million that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Horowitz: Las Vegas Police reopened the Tupac murder investigation at my request
“So at the end of the dinner, I say to the chief of police, Mike Gennaro, I'm like, Mike, you ought to reopen the Tupac case, and he goes, I'll talk to the sheriff. And the next day I called me, I said, what did the sheriff say? He said, if Ben wants us to open…”
Horowitz: Founder hesitation on painful layoffs can destroy the company
“The level of like, you know, I was completely wrong about everything, and now I'm going to fire half of you because I, of the mistakes I made will just cause you to hesitate in a way that could cost you the company itself.”
Horowitz: Facebook Executives Attempted a Coup in 2007 to Force Yahoo Sale
“The Facebook traffic had flattened and
The current, the executive staff that he had at the time was trying to run a coup to force him to sell to Yahoo. So they were leaking all this stuff to Valleyrag at the time and Valleyrag was, you know, calling for Zuck t…”
Horowitz: Top Founders Like Zuckerberg and Musk Understand People Exceptionally Well
“The ones who truly
Don't understand people are, don't actually turn out to be good CEOs. Like they don't get to that level. Like you can, you know, you can make fun of Larry Page or Elon or Zuck or so forth, but they are actually very smart about people.”
Horowitz: AI video is a distinct creative medium, not just efficiency
“It's not like making the old thing more efficient. It's a new medium. It's an actual new thing in the same ways that like movies weren't plays. You know, AI video is not video. The stories that you can tell are completely different because you can do things th…”
Horowitz: a16z Employees Who Criticize Founders on X Are Fired
“If you if you talk smack about an entrepreneur on X, you're fired. It doesn't matter if they're in the portfolio or not. You're just, that's it.”
Horowitz: Jeff Bezos is a top two or three CEO of the last 40 years
“And by the way, like whatever, like, you know, people always make you into cartoon when you get to that level, he is, you know, for sure, like a top two or three best CEO in the last 40 years.”
Horowitz: 'Shit sandwich' feedback fails because employees see right through it
“You're not giving them a shit sandwich. You're the greatest person in the world, but this is all fucked up. And I love you like that, that like people are onto that, like it's just too simple.”
Horowitz: Taste and instrumental virtuosity are distinct skills decoupled by AI
“There's a big difference between taste and creativity and being a virtuoso violinist, right? Like those don't necessarily have to be the same thing. And it's great that, you know, people You know, whatever. Practice violin for three hours a day and like get am…”
Horowitz: a16z Fines Investors $10 Per Minute for Meeting Tardiness
“If you're late for that meeting, it's 10 dollars a minute.”
Horowitz: CTOs Must Influence the Whole Company, Not Intimidate Subordinates
“The CTO has got to marshal the resources of the whole company to get what he needs to get the job done. And if you go to like a junior person, you're like five levels below you and make her cry. You know, you're probably right, but like, you're never going to …”
Horowitz: CEO hesitation creates a power vacuum leading to dysfunction
“And if you lose your confidence, you hesitate. And if you hesitate as CEO, then somebody's got to step into that vacuum. And then that's when it becomes very like. Political and dysfunctional.”
Horowitz: Daily executive standups permanently fix broken company communication
“As you grow, like communication becomes your biggest challenge. And so it's just a way to go like, okay, I'm gonna Manually unscalably fixed communication in this organization right now. And the amazing thing about it is does tend to be very long lasting where…”
Horowitz: Having a vacant executive role beats keeping a bad executive
“If he's doing a bad job, like no job is better than a bad job.”
Horowitz: Musk's Tesla Success Unlocked Hard Tech Venture Financing
“Whereas like only Elon could have financed Tesla, normal people can start to finance these things now because Elon has shown that it's possible. So it's a little bit like the four minute mile on that way, I would say.”
Horowitz: Flock Safety Cameras Caught Las Vegas Tesla Arsonist
“And actually, that's how they caught, interestingly, the Tesla terrorists who set the, Tesla ship on fire in Las Vegas was he came in earlier to case the place. Flock safety pick up the car. They saw the car come back at night and they were like, oh, we know w…”
Horowitz: Integrity Only Exists When Tested Against Severe Personal Costs
“Integrity only matters when it's tested. Everybody has integrity. Everybody's honest until it's tested. And then when it's tested, very few people are, right? Like when it costs you money, when it costs you a deal, when it costs you your marriage, are you hone…”
Horowitz: Uncorrected sub-standard behavior creates a new, lower organizational standard
“Well, if you if you see something below standard and you don't correct it, you set a new standard. And that's very true. And that's why they have to be specific because if they're not specific, you can't enforce it.”
Horowitz: Expecting life to be fair wrecks young people
“I see young people wreck themselves so much because they have an expectation that something about life is going to be fair. Like nothing about life is fair. It's not fair where you're born. It's not fair. What race you are. It's not fair. Like what your parent…”
Horowitz: a16z Hosted CEO Barbecues With Zuckerberg, Larry Page, and Kanye
“I used to have this event, which I should probably bring back, but I ran out of room in my backyard called the CEO barbecue, where we would bring all the CEOs for the portfolio. And then we would just like put like very famous people around them. So we had lik…”
Horowitz: Nothing at a16z Compares to the Trauma of Running Loudcloud
“The first company I founded, Lovecloud, which then became Opsware, was so difficult that I never, I like in life since then, like we like we've had difficulties building the firm, whatever, but like they never got like a rise out of me that could compare to, y…”
Horowitz: Paid in Full Foundation pays hip-hop pioneers $100K annual pensions
“So I have this charity that I created with my wife called the Paid in Full Foundation which basically, you know, is kind of this idea on a whim, but we give pensions to the old hip-hop guys. So, you know, they got a 100,000 dollars a year, and then we have thi…”
The other half of the tape: Ben Horowitz's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 7 times in 6 episodes on My First Million. 5 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Shaan Puri 6Balaji Srinivasan 1
Statements about Ben Horowitz, by other people (5)
Hire salespeople who beat quotas selling inferior products at tier-three companies
“Hire salespeople from the ones who had the shitty product. He's like, if you hire a salesperson from the people whose, the product was just being pulled by the market, they, you know, the fish were jumping in the boat, and you don't know if that person's a gre…”
Puri: Holding twice-daily meetings during startup crises eliminates excuses
“Cause if it is a big problem, then I'll just keep showing up and saying, okay, now what? Okay. Now what? And okay. And if you just do that for three days, The, like, all of the excuses get squeezed away is what I found. Like, all the excuses suddenly disappear…”
Ben Horowitz: Losing Ron Conway's network costs more than losing any deal
“No matter what deal you're in, it is more costly to be out of Ron's network than it is to, you know, try to get, get one up. And because of that, he is ensured that Silicon Valley works.”
Shaan Puri: Breakthrough solutions are found only through brute-force execution
“In my experience, the thing that's actually come out of this philosophy of there are no silver bullets is that actually
There are silver bullets, but the only way you discover them is by just firing a shit ton of bullets that you think are lead.
And then you s…”
Balaji: Andreessen, Horowitz, Ravikant, Armstrong, and Ehrsam are daily intellectual sparring partners
“Mark and I have kept up a high bandwidth conversation for almost a decade now. Mark and Ben for sure. Neville Rovi-Kant you know, who's a very good friend of mine. And Armstrong, Fred Urson. These are really smart guys who like basically folks who I get a boun…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
2026 1 mention in 1 episode
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2024 2 mentions in 1 episode
Appearances (1)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| 60 Minute Business Masterclass (worth more than your Stanford MBA) | Dec 1, 2025 | 43m |