At the DLD conference in Munich today, venture capitalist Ben Horowitz took the stage to discuss why he and his firm Andreessen Horowitz invests in a company and its founders. Last year, he said, Andreessen Horowitz found 2,355 companies that were potentially worth investing in that passed the company’s initial screen. In the end, Andreesen Horowitz only closed 24 deals (excluding seed deals). The… → Read More
The latest episode of my Foundation video series comes to you filmed live from the Google Ventures Founder & CEO Summit last week. I had the opportunity to sit down with Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Opsware and now General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Enjoy! → Read More
Ben Horowitz loves hip-hop, but in an interview with TechCrunch he outlined a deeper vision behind his firm’s $15M investment into Rap Genius. “Knowledge about knowledge over time becomes as important as the knowledge itself”, said Horowitz about the value of the site explaining lyrics, religion and more.
Watch Rap Genius’ founders tell me their roadmap for bringing understanding across the… → Read More
What better way to kick off TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2012, than to bring together Silicon Valley legend “Coach” Bill Campbell, Chairman of Intuit and Apple board member, with Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz? One of the first questions Campbell brought up was this idea of “software eating the world.” What that means, said Horowitz, is that there’s increasing value as the tech industry is… → Read More
Today, at the Web 2.0 Summit, Ben Horowitz, the former co-founder and CEO of Opsware and founding partner of well-known venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, took to the stage today to speak to John Heilemann of New York Magazine. Horowitz spoke to his history with his founding partner as well as what the two tech veterans look for in the companies they invest in and mentor.
Interestingly… → Read More
A new software as a service company Domo is formally launching tonight at a party in Salt Lake City. I have no idea how opulent or bare-bones this party will be, but theoretically the company would have plenty to spend on drinks, T-shirts and canapes. It just raised a massive $33 million series A from Benchmark Capital. Actually, counting the angel investments that were closed earlier but rolled… → Read More
Love photos but utterly bored by wave after wave of iPhone photo sharing apps? Lytro is the company for you. This is also the company for anyone who thinks Silicon Valley has fallen into a rut of innovation-less posing. And it’s the company for anyone who complains that the Valley is more about media and marketing than brass-knuckles, hardcore technology. This is the company that jaded, cranky… → Read More
I guess $1 billion under management just wasn’t enough. Andreessen Horowitz has just announced a new growth fund of $200 million. The fund with co-invest alongside the firm’s most recent $650 million fund, providing more capital for the kinds of late stage deals that have been raging in the Valley of late. (Check out our three part series on the trend here, here and here.)
That “co-invest” part… → Read More
(Editor’s note: This is the third installment in a series about the late stage, secondary investing craze sweeping the venture capital business. For the first two installments go here and here.)
On May 26, 2009 Mike sat down with Yuri Milner, Mark Zuckerberg and a Flipcam to talk about the then-scandalous $200 million investment DST made in Facebook, at a price that valued the company at about… → Read More
“It’s fucked up when your mind’s playin’ tricks on ya” —The Geto Boys
By far the most difficult skill for me to learn as CEO was the ability to manage my own psychology. Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared to keeping my mind in check. Over the years, I’ve spoken to hundreds of CEOs all with… → Read More
As Groupon pursues its plans for an IPO, it’s proposed valuation keeps on going up. First it was $15 billion, now it’s $25 billion, according to a report by Bloomberg. Remember, it was only in January, 2011 that it closed a $950 million venture round at a valuation just shy of $5 billion.
What’s going on here? Is this yet one more sign of Internet valuations getting out of hand—dare I say… → Read More
The firm is keeping the name, but Andreessen Horowitz is officially no longer just the Ben and Marc show. It has added a fourth general partner (the third was John O’Farrell), and astoundingly, he didn’t come from Opsware. The new dealmaker is Scott Weiss, an experienced entrepreneur who may not be a household name, but like Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen has serious entrepreneurial chops… → Read More
Yes, China is taking over the world. Or at least the Internet. No, this is not like the WE’LL-ALL-BE-WORKING-FOR-JAPAN-oh-nevermind scare of the 1980s. Why? Because China has more than 1 billion people. It already represents the largest online audience in the world and is less than 30% penetrated and has Internet spending per capita that’s less than one-third of the United States.
That means two… → Read More
Ben Horowitz is a partner at Andreessen Horowitz and the former co-founder and CEO of Opsware.
Every day I hear from entrepreneurs, angel investors and venture capitalists about an exciting new movement called “the consumerization of the enterprise.” They tell me how the old expensive Rolex wearing sales forces are a thing of the past and, in the future, companies will “consume”… → Read More
Every day I hear from entrepreneurs, angel investors and venture capitalists about an exciting new movement called “the consumerization of the enterprise.” They tell me how the old expensive Rolex wearing sales forces are a thing of the past and, in the future, companies will “consume” enterprise products proactively like consumers pick up Twitter.
But when I talk to the most successful… → Read More
Just 15 months after Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz officially jumped to the venture capital darkside with the close of a $300 million fund, Andreessen Horowitz is announcing the close of a second $650 million fund. In less than two years, the firm has rocketed up to a whopping $950 million under management, an investment staff of 18 people and a portfolio that includes everything from Skype to… → Read More
Foursquare, the geo-mobile startup everybody tried to invest in or buy, now has officially closed its Series B funding round. The “wire transfer heard ’round the world,” as board member Bryce Roberts puts it, was for $20 million, giving the company a $95 million pre-money valuation. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, as previously reported, with existing investors Union Square Ventures and… → Read More
Andreessen Horowitz celebrates its first birthday with a number of new hires, including its third general partner – John O’Farrell – who joins founding general partners Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. O’Farrell was most recently a vice president at Silver Spring Networks.
We covered the launch of Andreessen Horowitz a year ago here.
The company has also recently hired two partners – Margit… → Read More
Most entrepreneurs take it for granted these days that the best way to run a startup is lean and mean. It is a badge of honor to be able to take a startup as far as you can with as little capital as possible. But is that always the best strategy? At our upcoming Disrupt conference in New York City (May-24-26, buy tickets here), VCs Ben Horowitz and Fred Wilson will debate both sides of the coin. → Read More
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