Benjamin Abraham Horowitz (born January 13, 1966) is an American businessman, investor, blogger, and author. He is a technology entrepreneur and co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz along with Marc Andreessen. He previously co-founded and served as president and chief executive officer of the enterprise software company Opsware, which Hewlett-Packard acquired in 2007. Horowitz is the author of The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers, a book about startups, and What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture.
Early life and education
Horowitz was born in London, England, and raised in Berkeley, California. His parents were Elissa Krauthamer and conservative writer and policy advocate David Horowitz. He is of Ashkenazi Jewish descent; his great-grandparents were Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire who arrived in the U.S. in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries. Horowitz earned a B.A. from Columbia University in 1988 and an M.S. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1990, both in computer science.
Career before venture capital
Horowitz began his career as an engineer at Silicon Graphics in 1990. In 1995, he joined Marc Andreessen at Netscape as a product manager. From 1997 to 1998, he was vice president for the Directory and Security Product Line at Netscape. After Netscape was acquired by AOL in 1998, Horowitz served as Vice President of AOL's eCommerce Division.
In September 1999, Horowitz co-founded Loudcloud with Andreessen, Tim Howes, and In Sik Rhee. Loudcloud offered infrastructure and application hosting services to enterprise and Internet customers such as Ford Motor Company, Nike, Inc., Gannett Company, News Corporation, and the United States Army. Horowitz took Loudcloud public on March 9, 2001.
In June 2002, Horowitz began transforming Loudcloud into Opsware, an enterprise software company. He sold Loudcloud's core managed services business to Electronic Data Systems for $63.5 million in cash, transferring 100% of Loudcloud's revenue to EDS while the company remained publicly traded on NASDAQ. With EDS as its first enterprise software customer, Horowitz grew Opsware to hundreds of enterprise customers, over $100 million in annual revenue, and 550 employees. In July 2007, he sold Opsware to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in cash. Horowitz served as president and CEO for the entire history of the company. Opsware shares IPO'ed at $6, sank to $0.35 per share at its nadir, and traded at $14.25 per share at the time of the sale to HP.
Following the sale, Horowitz spent one year at Hewlett-Packard as Vice President and General Manager in HP Software, with responsibility for 3,000 employees and $2.8 billion in annual revenue.
Andreessen Horowitz
On July 6, 2009, Horowitz and Andreessen launched Andreessen Horowitz to invest in and advise both early-stage startups and more established growth companies in high technology. The firm began with an initial capitalization of $300 million and within three years had $2.7 billion under management across three funds. Under Horowitz's leadership, the firm has become a prominent investor in artificial intelligence and machine learning companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Figure AI, reflecting his focus on transformative technologies.
Bibliography
- Horowitz, Ben (2014). The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers. Harper Business. ISBN 0062273205
- Horowitz, Ben (2019). What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture. Harper Business. ISBN 0062871331
Personal life
Horowitz lives in Las Vegas with his wife, Felicia Wiley Horowitz. They married in 1988 and have three children. In July 2024, Horowitz announced he would donate to super PACs supporting Donald Trump's presidential campaign. In October, however, he announced that he and his wife would make "significant" donations to groups supporting Kamala Harris's campaign, citing their friendship dating back over 10 years. During the first half of 2025, Horowitz donated $3 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC that supports Donald Trump.