Ben Horowitz on TBPN: Three Decades with Marc and Building for the Long Game

We got a lot of criticism from other funds going like, that's crazy. You know, no billion dollar fund has ever returned money. If you look at AI, the technology is, like, working and getting to the world right now. With everybody talking about a bubble, I was like, oh, great. We're not in a bubble. Because it's when nobody believes it's a bubble that it becomes a bubble. The tech industry itself used to just not be that big. Yeah. And now the tech industry is all industry. Following the announcement of a sixteen z's new fund, Ben Horowitz joined CBPN to discuss how Andreessen Horowitz has evolved its venture from structure as technology expands across every sector of the economy. Drag on decades of operating and investing experience, Ben reflects on why entrepreneurship remains difficult at any scale, how long term partnerships influence decision making inside a venture firm, and why specialization and independence have become central to a 16 z's model. He explains how the firm evaluates new markets, adapts to faster technology cycles, and stays close to founders while operating at scale. The conversation also covers Ben's perspective on AI as a generational platform shift, how it's changing company formation and investor judgment, how to think about market size and fund scale, and what founders should understand about navigating media attention and public discourse while building durable long term companies. Let's get into it. We have Ben Horowitz, the founder of Andreessen Horowitz, the Horowitz in Andreessen Horowitz. Ben, how are you doing? Welcome to the show. Good. How are you guys? We're fantastic. Massive news today. Congratulations, obviously. We'll get into the the, the the the the fun structure. I'm sure we'll have a bunch of questions there. I wanted to kick it off with a reflection on your book, The Hard Things The Hard Thing About Hard Things. What is the one piece of advice that you think has aged particularly well from that? What has never changed? And then maybe you could take me through some things that might have changed in this era, bigger companies, AI. What what what do you go back to and what do you maybe think, needs needs an update? Yeah. Well, I, like, I think it's still, like, really hard to be an entrepreneur. And one of my favorite quotes in the book is, something, Mark said to me, you know, when things were extremely bad. He said, you know, one day we'll look back on this chuckle nervously and change the subject. I think someone has succeeded those things. How it's spelled. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The only thing he he would always say is things get darkest before they go completely black. Yeah. I mean, it's it's underrated how how long you two have been in partnership beyond just this, this firm. You've worked together for so long. Thirty years. Yeah. Thirty years. What a run. An overnight success. It's true overnight success if there ever …