Ben Horowitz

How Ben Horowitz helped reopen and crack the Tupac murder case

Horowitz arranged a dinner with the Las Vegas PD over the unsolved Tupac murder, saw the case file, and pushed the chief of police to reopen it. The sheriff said if Ben wanted it reopened they'd reopen it, and they caught the guy.

“And it turns out the LAPD really fouled the case, like almost on purpose, it looks like. So the end of the dinner, I say to the, uh, chief of police, Mike Gennaro, I'm like, Mike, you ought to reopen the Tupac case. And he goes, I'll talk to the sheriff. And the next day I call him, I said, what'd the sheriff say? He said, if Ben wants us to open the case, we're opening the case. And they reopened the Tupac case and they caught the guy.”

The script for confronting a talented but abrasive exec

Horowitz coaches a CEO whose CTO made a junior employee cry: tell him he's a fantastic director of engineering but not yet an effective CTO, because a CTO must marshal the whole company, and you can't be effective with someone you've made cry.

“I would say, hey, you know, you're a fantastic director of engineering, but you're not an effective CTO. And, you know, if you want to be a director of engineering forever, like, we can just run just like this and it's no problem. You do a great job of managing your team. You get stuff done on time. You're great. But you're not effective with the rest of the organization. And that's what a CTO is. A CTO's got to marshal the resources of the whole company to get what he needs to get the job done.”

Steal thisSeparate the role from the person: praise the job they do well, then name the specific behavior that's blocking the bigger role.

Get all the way to the truth before a hard conversation

Horowitz's rule for confrontation: stop thinking about yourself, isolate the specific behavior, and tell the person exactly what is true, neither worse nor better than it is. People accept hard feedback when they feel you're being completely honest.

“Like, you're— I'm like completely open and honest about this shit. Like, I'm not, I'm not telling you it's worse than it is, and I'm not telling you it's better than it is. I'm telling you what it is.”

Steal thisBefore confronting someone, drop the ego and the grievances and ask: what's actually true, why do they do it, and what would motivate them to fix it?

Zuckerberg's fix for flat traffic: a 2-month engineering bootcamp

When Facebook traffic flattened in 2007 after doubling engineering from 400 to 800, new engineers wrote straight to MySQL and broke login. Zuck's takeaway wasn't to blame them but that a company that size has to teach knowledge, so he built a 2-month bootcamp every engineer went through.

“And so traffic flattened because of that.. And I was like, well, how do you train these guys? And he said, train these guys. And I never forget that. And I was like, oh shit. I said, Zach, like when you're 10 people, there's no knowledge in the company. Like everybody just comes on and they jump in and they start working and so forth. But you get to like 800 people, 1,000 people, like you have a lot of knowledge that's in your company about like how the product works, how you check in code, everything. You actually have to teach people that because they don't know who to ask or how to learn that on their own.”

The daily 8am meeting to unstick an off-track project

A tactic Horowitz learned from Andy Grove: when a project is off track, hold a daily 8am meeting where the CEO demands answers ("where's my money?"). Dumb blockers surface fast because people didn't know who to ask, and the fix tends to last.

“So I said, Leah, just like every day, 8 AM, get everybody in the cash collection team together and start the meeting by saying like, where's my money? Like, why haven't we collected it? And like, make them explain to you why they haven't collected it. And you'll be shocked at why they haven't collected it. And sure enough, you know, it's like, well, we didn't know we could edit the email.”

Steal thisFor any stuck project, run a daily standing meeting where you demand answers until the hidden blockers surface; communication, not competence, is usually the problem.

Founders fail from a lack of confidence, not competence

Horowitz's number one reason a founder fails at the CEO job: a crisis of confidence that makes them hesitate. They can see what they should do but aren't sure, so they wait.

“I would say the number one reason why a founder fails at the CEO job is some kind of lack of confidence, crisis of confidence, whatever it is that causes them to hesitate, basically. Okay, I should do this, and I can see that I should do this, but I'm not sure I should do this, so I'm gonna wait.”

Trust your eyes: hesitation kills smart CEOs like slow feet kill fast players

Horowitz's pattern for failing CEOs is a non-decision where a decision is needed. Like football, where being fast means nothing if you don't start running when you see the play, being smart means nothing if you wait too long to pull the trigger.

“In football, they always say, like, trust— you have to trust your eyes because you could be really fast. But if you don't start running when you see the thing, If you wait, then you're not fast. Um, and that's kind of what it's like for CEOs. Like, you could be really, really smart, but if you wait too long before you pull the trigger, you're not smart anymore. It's too late.”

Steal thisWhen you see what needs to happen, act immediately; no job is better than a bad job, so don't let press, optics, or excuses delay the decision.

AI that reads a dirt sample to find buried copper

Horowitz cites a16z portfolio company Cobalt Metals, which takes a dirt sample and uses AI to analyze it and predict there's copper a mile down, part of a wave of startups using AI to help America catch up on rare earths and defense manufacturing.

“And then we have a company, Cobalt Metals, that is basically using AI. So they take a dirt sample and they use AI to analyze the dirt sample and they can tell you, oh yeah, there's going to be like, you know, copper below that., you know, whatever, a mile down into the earth.”

AI video is a new medium, not cheaper video

Horowitz predicts AI video will be to video what movies were to plays: a genuinely new medium enabling stories that were impossible even with $100M budgets, opening white space for new creatives and entertainment entrepreneurs nobody is imagining yet.

“It's a new medium. It's an actual new thing in the same ways that like movies weren't plays. Uh, you know, AI video is not video. The stories that you can tell are completely different because you can do things that you just, you know, without a 200 with a $100 million budget you had had no chance of doing, and now it's like no problem.”

Charge $10/minute for being late to entrepreneur meetings

At a16z, being late to a meeting with an entrepreneur costs $10 a minute, no excuses, even for the bathroom or an important call. The shock-value rule forces partners to plan their day and embeds real respect for founders' time as a daily habit.

“So it's like, well, if you're late for that meeting, it's $10 a minute. And it's like, well, $10 a minute? Like, well, what if I have to go to the bathroom? Yeah, you owe me $50. I don't care. Um, you know, what if I had an important phone call? Okay, you owe me $100. Like, I don't care you had an important phone call.”

Steal thisTurn a value into a daily-enforced behavior with a shocking, specific penalty so people feel the culture every day, not once a year.

Culture is a set of actions, not values on a wall

Horowitz argues integrity only matters when tested, so abstract values are useless; a culture must be defined by specific required behaviors. At a16z, trashing any entrepreneur on X is an instant firing because they're dream builders, not dream killers.

“Like, integrity only matters when it's tested. Everybody has integrity. Everybody's honest until it's tested. And then when it's tested, very few people are, right? Like, when it costs you money, when it costs you a deal, when it costs you your marriage. Are you honest then?”

Steal thisDefine culture as specific, enforceable behaviors tied to your daily work, not abstract words like integrity that get weaponized.

If you see something below standard and don't correct it, you set a new standard

Horowitz cites a military principle: tolerating below-standard behavior silently establishes that lower bar as the new norm. It's why culture rules must be specific enough to actually enforce.

“Well, if you, if you see something below standard and you don't correct it, you set a new standard. And, and that's, that's very true. And that's why they have to be specific, because if they're not specific, you can't enforce it.”

Steal thisCorrect below-standard behavior on the spot; every uncorrected lapse quietly lowers the bar for everyone.

"Life isn't fair" — the single best lesson Horowitz ever got

After Horowitz lost a relay race unfairly as a kid, his father cut off his protest with "life isn't fair." He calls it the single best lesson of his life, and credits it for never once thinking the dot-com crash was unfair, just something to deal with.

“And he said, stop right there. He said, life isn't fair. And And that shocked me so much at the time. But it really stuck with me. And it's the single best lesson that I ever got in my life was life isn't fair. And I see young people wreck themselves so much because they have an expectation that something about life is going to be fair.”

Steal thisDrop the expectation that anything in life is fair; success comes from dealing with reality as it is, not from being treated fairly.

Paid in Full Foundation: $100K-a-year pensions for OG hip hop pioneers

Horowitz and his wife created the Paid in Full Foundation, which gives the old hip hop pioneers $100,000-a-year pensions plus an award show naming them grandmasters. It fixes the fact that the people who invented a multi-billion-dollar art form never got paid.

“So I have this, uh, charity that I created with my wife called the Paid in Full Foundation, um, which basically, you know, is kind of this idea on a whim, but we give pensions to the old hip hop guys. So, you know, they got $100,000 a year and, and then we have this award show for them, you know, where we name them grandmasters and so forth.”

Steal thisWhen the creators of a category got economically left behind, you can go back and correct it directly with pensions and recognition.

Grandmaster Caz wrote Rapper's Delight and never got paid or credited

Horowitz tells how Grandmaster Caz essentially wrote Rapper's Delight, and Big Bank Hank stole it so brazenly he rapped Caz's own name (G-R-A-N-D-M-A-S-T-E-R) without changing the words. Caz, now in his mid-60s, still a star, only just bought his first house outside the projects.

“So Big Bang Handcrafts, I'm the G-R-A-N-D, right, right, N-D-M-A-S-T-E-R. That's Grandmaster Kaz. That's his. He's rapping about his name, not Big Bank Hank. Big Bank Hank is not named Grandmaster. Why is he calling himself Grandmaster? Because he stole his fucking rhyme. And he never got paid and he never got credit for it.”

Impatience with action, patience with results; only lead bullets

Shaan shares two Twitch-era mottos he put atop every weekly memo. Emmett Shear corrected his impatience with results, so he wrote 'impatience with action, patience with results.' The second, from Ben Horowitz, is that there are no silver bullets, only lead bullets: you keep firing many things until the thing falls over.

“At the top I wrote in bold, impatience with action, patience with results. I said, that's our team motto. I'm putting it up here mostly for myself to remember impatience with action. That's when impatience is good, is when you're being impatient about taking action. But impatience is bad when you're impatient about results.”

Steal thisBe impatient about taking action but patient about results, and fire many lead bullets rather than hunting for one silver bullet.

VCs fought over Clubhouse by hosting shows to win the deal

Shaan describes how funds courted the hot Clubhouse round by hanging out on the app after work; a16z's Andrew Chen won the deal partly by agreeing that Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz would host public shows and open their celebrity Rolodex.

“Andrew Chen, who you were, you know, hanging out with, actually was the one who ended up winning the deal. And I think as part of it, I'm sure they agreed to host some shows. So they have like They have the Good Times show, which, uh, that's the one that Elon Musk came on the other day.”