Horowitz: Musk's Tesla Success Unlocked Hard Tech Venture Financing
Ben Horowitz · 60 Minute Business Masterclass (worth more than your Stanford MBA) · Dec 1, 2025 · at 35:17
Ben Horowitz discusses why hard tech and hardware startups have become viable for broader venture capital investment.
0:00 / 0:12exact quote · 12.5s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“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.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Ben Horowitz
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…”