Books Recommended by Ben Horowitz

Ben Horowitz is an entrepreneur and investor, co-founder of Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (also known as a16z), and the author of The Hard Thing About Hard Things, one of the best books for startup founders who want to know what to expect from their chosen path.

Ben co-founded and served as CEO and president of Opsware (formerly Loudcloud), which was bought by Hewlett-Packard in 2007 for $1.6 billion. He was appointed VP and general manager of Business Technology Optimization for Software at HP. Earlier, he worked at AOL, where he oversaw development of the E-Commerce Platform Division, He also joined Netscape in 1995, where he ran several product divisions and was VP of the Directory and Security product line. Prior to that, he held various senior product marketing positions at Lotus Development Corporation.

In 2009, Ben and Marc Andreessen founded Andreessen Horowitz. In 2019, he served on the board of several companies that are part of their portfolio, such as Foursquare, Genius, Lyft, Medium, and others.

In 2014, Ben’s book “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” came out – a must read for anyone who wants to become an entrepreneur, or recently started building a startup and is tired of all the management and leadership books. This one’s a raw, no-bullsh*t approach, where he talks about building a business when there are no easy answers.

In October 2019, Ben was set to release the book “What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture“, where he talks about how companies can create and sustain the culture they want.