
Co-founded Opsware and ran it as president and CEO until Hewlett-Packard bought it in 2007; wrote The Hard Thing About Hard Things and What You Do Is Who You Are.
Andreessen Horowitz
Opsware
Opsware/Loudcloud
Ben Horowitz at Andreessen Horowitz
The Hard Thing About Hard Things is the primary operator's text on running a company under duress, and his blog posts are the source most later management writing on startups cites.
2 books of their own · 28 articles · 18 books they recommend · 29 appearances
Subtitled 'Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers'
“…books I've recommended, highlighted to death, or forced on friends.” — Andrew Wilkinson
Source: Andrew Wilkinson's Bookshelf, neverenough.com
Recommended by: Andrew Wilkinson, Balaji S. Srinivasan and 34 others
Culture is how people behave when the leader is absent, and must be designed.
Recommended by: Matt Mullenweg, Andrew Chen, Anu Hariharan and 2 others
The Hard Thing About Hard Things | Subtitled 'Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers' | 2014 | T3 | Andrew Wilkinson, Balaji S. Srinivasan, Nat Eliason and 33 others |
What You Do Is Who You Are | Culture is how people behave when the leader is absent, and must be designed. | 2019 | T4 | Matt Mullenweg, Andrew Chen, Anu Hariharan and 2 others |
From Harlem to the top of the US military, through Vietnam, Panama and Desert Storm.
A Jewish boy survives the war and Soviet rule in Hungary and escapes to America.
Also recommended by: Keith Rabois, Patrick Collison
Building Creative Artists Agency into Hollywood's top agency, then failing at Disney.
Also recommended by: Benedict Evans, Jason Calacanis and 3 others
Management as production: a manager's output is the output of the team they lead.
Also recommended by: Nat Eliason, Tim Ferriss, Andrew Chen and 23 others
The decentralised structure and financial controls that ran General Motors.
Also recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Patrick Collison
How Netflix built talent density and candour so it could remove controls.
Also recommended by: Matt Mullenweg, Alex Lieberman, Guy Spier and 1 other
How to spot a strategic inflection point, when a tenfold force changes a business.
Also recommended by: Charlie Munger, Mohnish Pabrai and 10 others
Why well-run firms lose to cheaper, worse products that enter at the market's bottom.
Also recommended by: Jim Collins, Mohnish Pabrai, Aaron Levie and 26 others
Subtitled 'Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers'
Also recommended by: Andrew Wilkinson, Balaji S. Srinivasan and 33 others
Build, measure, learn: test what customers want with small experiments.
Also recommended by: Nat Eliason, Sheryl Sandberg, Andrew Chen and 16 others
Why startups should build something new and own a small market before growing.
Also recommended by: Balaji S. Srinivasan, Eric Weinstein and 35 others
How the Mongol empire's trade and communication helped make the modern world.
Also recommended by: Austen Allred, Daymond John, Justin Kan and 1 other
Incerto volume 5
Also recommended by: Nat Eliason, Ana Fabrega, Changpeng Zhao and 11 others
Companies lose their position by broadening; narrowing the focus wins it back.
Also recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Arianna Huffington and 2 others
| The Machine Age Fund | a16z.com | Blog post | 2026 |
| Why Are We Here? Why Did We Raise $15B? | a16z.com | Blog post | 2026 |
| Travis is Back | a16z.com | Blog post | 2025 |
| A16Z's Global Mission | a16z.com | Blog post | 2025 |
| Raghu Raghuram | a16z.com | Blog post | 2025 |
| Safety First | a16z.com | Blog post | 2024 |
| New Funds, New Era | a16z.com | Blog post | 2024 |
| Politics and the Future | a16z.com | Blog post | 2024 |
| The Little Tech Agenda (with Marc Andreessen) | a16z.com | Blog post | 2024 |
| AI for Startups | a16z.com | Blog post | 2024 |
| Can Do vs. Can't Do Cultures | Andreessen Horowitz | Article | 2014 |
| Why Founders Fail: The Product CEO Paradox | Andreessen Horowitz | Article | 2013 |
| The Struggle | Andreessen Horowitz | Article | 2012 |
| Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager | Andreessen Horowitz | Article | 2012 |
| Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO | Andreessen Horowitz | Article | 2011 |
| What's The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology | Andreessen Horowitz | Article | 2011 |
| Why We Prefer Founding CEOs | Andreessen Horowitz | Article | 2010 |
| How to Minimize Politics in Your Company | Andreessen Horowitz | Article | 2010 |
| Introduction to High Output Management | bhorowitz.com (Ben's Blog), via the Wayback Machine | Column | |
| Medium and a16z | bhorowitz.com (Ben's Blog), via the Wayback Machine | Column | |
| Where Do Leaders Come From? | bhorowitz.com (Ben's Blog), via the Wayback Machine | Column | |
| Who Do You Trust? | bhorowitz.com (Ben's Blog), via the Wayback Machine | Column | |
| Career Advice for Recent Graduates | bhorowitz.com (Ben's Blog), via the Wayback Machine | Column | |
| Little Things | bhorowitz.com (Ben's Blog), via the Wayback Machine | Column | |
| The Sad Truth About Developing Executives | bhorowitz.com (Ben's Blog), via the Wayback Machine | Column | |
| The Past and Future of Systems Management | bhorowitz.com (Ben's Blog), via the Wayback Machine | Column | |
| Learning from My Mistakes | bhorowitz.com (Ben's Blog), via the Wayback Machine | Column | |
| One Management Concept from How to Manage Startups | bhorowitz.com (Ben's Blog), via the Wayback Machine | Column |