Ben Horowitz is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and The New York Times bestselling author of The Hard Thing About Hard Things, which is now available in 19 languages. He also created the Andreessen Horowitz Cultural Leadership Fund, which aims to connect the greatest cultural leaders in the world to the best new technology companies, and enable more young African Americans to enter the technology industry. Prior to a16z, Ben was cofounder and CEO of Opsware (formerly Loudcloud), which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007, and was appointed vice president and general manager of Business Technology Optimization for Software at HP. Earlier, he was vice president and general manager of America Online’s E-commerce Platform division, where he oversaw development of the company’s flagship Shop@AOL service. Previously, Ben ran several product divisions at Netscape Communications. He also served as vice president of Netscape’s widely acclaimed Directory and Security product line. Before joining Netscape in July 1995, he held various senior product marketing positions at Lotus Development Corporation. Ben has an MS in Computer Science from UCLA and a BA in Computer Science from Columbia University. Ben serves on the board of the following Andreessen Horowitz portfolio companies: Caffeine, Capriza, Databricks, Foursquare, Genius, Lyft, Magnet Systems, Medium, NationBuilder, Okta, SignalFx, Sisu, Tanium, TripActions, United Masters, and Usermind. He is also on the board of CODE2040.