Benjamin Abraham Horowitz (born June 13, 1966) is an American businessman, investor, blogger, and author. He is a technology entrepreneur and co-founder along with
Marc Andreessen
Marc Lowell Andreessen ( ; born July 9, 1971) is an American entrepreneur, investor, and software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and general partner of Silicon ...
of the
venture capital
Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...
firm
Andreessen Horowitz
Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.
Andreessen ...
. He previously co-founded and served as president and chief executive officer of the enterprise software company
Opsware
Opsware, Inc. was a software company based in Sunnyvale, California, that offered products for server and network device provisioning, configuration, and management targeted toward enterprise customers. Opsware had offices in New York City, Redm ...
, which
Hewlett-Packard
The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...
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 Benjamin Abraham Horowitz in London, England and raised in
Berkeley, California
Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...
, the son of Elissa Krauthamer and conservative writer and policy advocate
David Horowitz
David Joel Horowitz (born January 10, 1939) is an American conservative writer. He is a founder and president of the right-wing David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC); editor of the Center's website ''FrontPage Magazine''; and director of Disco ...
. Horowitz's great-grandparents were Jewish immigrants from the
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
who arrived in the U.S. in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries.
Horowitz earned a BA in Computer Science from
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
in 1988 and an MS in
Computer Science
Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...
from
UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
in 1990.
Career
Horowitz began his career as an engineer at
Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...
in 1990.
In 1995, Horowitz joined Marc Andreessen at
Netscape
Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was onc ...
as a product manager.
From 1997 to 1998, Horowitz was vice president for the Directory and Security Product Line at Netscape.
After Netscape was acquired by
AOL
AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo (2017â ...
in 1998, Horowitz served as Vice President of AOL's eCommerce Division.
In September 1999, Horowitz cofounded
Loudcloud
Opsware, Inc. was a software company based in Sunnyvale, California, that offered products for server and network device provisioning, configuration, and management targeted toward enterprise customers. Opsware had offices in New York City, R ...
with Andreessen,
Tim Howes
Tim Howes (born September 21, 1963) is a software engineer, entrepreneur and author. He is the co-creator of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), the Internet standard for accessing directory servers. He co-founded enterprise soft ...
, and In Sik Rhee.
Loudcloud offered infrastructure and application hosting services to enterprise and Internet customers such as
Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. The company sells automobi ...
,
Nike, Inc.
Nike, Inc. ( or ) is an American multinational corporation that is engaged in the design, development, manufacturing, and worldwide marketing and sales of footwear, apparel, equipment, accessories, and services. The company is headquartered ne ...
,
Gannett Company
Gannett Co., Inc. () is an American mass media holding company headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.[News Corporation
News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp.), also variously known as News Corporation Limited, was an American multinational mass media corporation controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Ne ...]
, the
United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...
and other large organizations. Horowitz took Loudcloud public on March 9, 2001.
In June 2002, Horowitz began a transformation of Loudcloud into
Opsware
Opsware, Inc. was a software company based in Sunnyvale, California, that offered products for server and network device provisioning, configuration, and management targeted toward enterprise customers. Opsware had offices in New York City, Redm ...
, an enterprise software company. He took the first step by selling Loudcloud's core managed services business to
Electronic Data Systems
Electronic all cash BSN acc: 1311729000110205 Data Systems (EDS) was an American multinational information technology equipment and services company headquartered in Plano, Texas which was founded in 1962 by Ross Perot. The company was a subs ...
for $63.5 million in cash. This transaction transferred 100% of Loudcloud's revenue to EDS while the company was publicly traded on NASDAQ. Beginning 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, Horowitz sold Opsware to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in cash.
Horowitz was Loudcloud's and Opsware's President and Chief Executive Officer for the entire history of the company. Along the way, shares of Opsware IPO'ed at $6, sank to $0.35 per share at its nadir and traded at $14.25 a share at the time of its sale to HP.
Following the sale of Opsware to Hewlett-Packard, Horowitz then 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
Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.
Andreessen ...
,
to invest in and advise both early-stage startups and more established growth companies in high technology. Andreessen Horowitz began with an initial capitalization of $300 million
and within three years had $2.7 billion under management across three funds.
Personal life
Horowitz lives in
Atherton, California
Atherton () is an List of municipalities in California, incorporated town in San Mateo County, California, San Mateo County, California, United States. Its population was 7,188 as of 2020.
Atherton is known for its wealth; in 1990 and 2019, Athe ...
with his wife, Felicia Wiley Horowitz.
They married in 1988 and have three children.
References
External links
Ben's Blog
{{DEFAULTSORT:Horowitz, Ben
1966 births
Living people
American bloggers
American computer businesspeople
American investors
American technology company founders
American technology chief executives
Berkeley High School (Berkeley, California) alumni
Businesspeople from Berkeley, California
Businesspeople in software
Columbia College (New York) alumni
Computer engineers
Engineers from California
Jewish American philanthropists
Jewish American scientists
Jewish engineers
Writers from Berkeley, California
Private equity and venture capital investors
University of California, Los Angeles alumni
Andreessen Horowitz
People from Atherton, California
Netscape people
British emigrants to the United States
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
21st-century American Jews