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  • January 20th, 2013

    Ben Horowitz: “We Like To Invest In College Dropouts With Insane Ideas Going After Tiny Markets With No Way To Monetize”

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    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

    November 14th, 2012

    Foundation Video: Ben Horowitz Of Andreessen Horowitz On What He Looks For In A Pitch

    Foundation Interview: Ben Horowitz

    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

    October 3rd, 2012

    Ben Horowitz And The Founders Explain Why A16Z Put $15M Into Rap Genius: “Knowledge About Knowledge”

    Rap Genius Raises $15 Million

    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

    September 10th, 2012

    Ben Horowitz: Dinosaurs Were Not In Favor Of Being Replaced By Birds

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    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

    October 18th, 2011

    Ben Horowitz: “Facebook Is The Best-Run Company In Technology”

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    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

    July 13th, 2011

    Series A Whopper: Benchmark Invests $33M in New BI Company Domo

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    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

    June 21st, 2011

    Lytro Launches to Transform Photography with $50M in Venture Funds (TCTV)

    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

    April 6th, 2011

    Andreessen Horowitz Announces Yet Another Growth Fund of $200M

    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

    April 3rd, 2011

    How We All Missed Web 2.0's "Netscape Moment"

    (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

    March 31st, 2011

    What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology.

    “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

    March 17th, 2011

    Is Groupon Worth $25 Billion? Revenue Now "Multiple Billions Of Dollars"

    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

    March 1st, 2011

    Andreessen Horowitz Finally Adds A Fourth General Partner, Scott Weiss

    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

    November 17th, 2010

    Will China's 1999 Moment Bail-Out Some Valley VCs?

    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

    November 13th, 2010

    Meet the New Enterprise Customer, He’s a Lot Like the Old Enterprise Customer

    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

    November 13th, 2010

    Meet the New Enterprise Customer, He’s a Lot Like the Old Enterprise Customer

    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

    November 2nd, 2010

    Andreessen Horowitz Raises $650M Fund, Just Shy Of $1B Under Management

    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

    June 29th, 2010

    Foursquare Closes $20 Million Series B From Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square, And O'Reilly

    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

    June 20th, 2010

    Andreessen Horowitz Celebrates First Year With New General Partner John O'Farrell

    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

    April 12th, 2010

    Ben Horowitz And Fred Wilson Debate Fat Versus Lean Startups At TC Disrupt

    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