Ben Horowitz

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,[2][3] and What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture.[4] Benjamin Abraham Horowitz[5] was born in London, England and raised in Berkeley, California, the son of Elissa Krauthamer and conservative writer and policy advocate David Horowitz. He is of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. Horowitz's great-grandparents were Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire who arrived in the U.S. in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries.[6] Horowitz earned a B.A. from Columbia University in 1988 and an M.S. from University of California, Los Angeles, in 1990, both in computer science.[7][8] Horowitz began his career as an engineer at Silicon Graphics in 1990.[7] In 1995, he joined Marc Andreessen at Netscape as a product manager.[9] From 1997 to 1998, Horowitz was vice president for the Directory and Security Product Line at Netscape.[7] After Netscape was acquired by AOL in 1998, Horowitz served as Vice President of AOL's eCommerce Division.[10] In September 1999, Horowitz cofounded Loudcloud with Andreessen, Tim Howes, and In Sik Rhee.[11] Loudcloud offered infrastructure and application hosting services to enterprise and Internet customers such as Ford Motor Company, Nike, Inc., Gannett Company, News Corporation, the United States Army and other large organizations. Horowitz took Loudcloud public on March 9, 2001.[12]