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 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 start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...

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 H ...

. 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 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 E ...

, 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 practical disciplines (includi ...

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 ...

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 sof ...

in 1990. In 1995, Horowitz joined Marc Andreessen at Netscape 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 in 1998, Horowitz served as Vice President of AOL's eCommerce Division. In September 1999, Horowitz cofounded Loudcloud 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,

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 New ...

, the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

and other large organizations. Horowitz took Loudcloud public on March 9, 2001. In June 2002, Horowitz began a transformation of Loudcloud into

, an enterprise software company. He took the first step by selling Loudcloud's core managed services business to Electronic Data Systems 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

, 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 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