Ben Horowitz is a co-founder and partner of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and the New York Times Bestselling author of The Hard Thing About Hard Things.

Prior to a16z, Ben was cofounder and CEO of Opsware (formerly Loudcloud), which was acquired by HP in 2007 for $1.6 billion, 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 [email protected] 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 a BA in Computer Science from Columbia University and an MS in Computer Science from UCLA. He serves on the board of many companies including Foursquare, Jawbone, Lytro, Magnet, Okta, Rap Genius and Tidemark.

Follow Ben on “Ben’s Blog” (www.bhorowitz.com), where he covers everything from how CEOs should hire executives to how to minimize politics in your company, and Twitter, @bhorowitz.