Andreessen Horowitz
 |
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| Private | |
| Industry | Private equity |
| Founded | July 6, 2009 |
| Founder |
Marc Andreessen Ben Horowitz |
| Headquarters | Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, California, U.S. |
| Products | Venture capital |
| Website | www |
Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, United States.
Between 2006 and 2010, Andreessen and Horowitz were active investors in technology companies. Separately and together, they invested $80 million in 45 start-ups such as Twitter. During that time, the two became well known as super angel investors.
On July 6, 2009, Andreessen and Horowitz launched their venture capital fund with an initial capitalization of $300 million. In November 2010, the company raised another $650 million for a second venture fund at a time when the field of venture capitalism was contracting. In less than two years, the firm had a total of $1.2 billion under management in two funds. In May 2011, Andreessen Horowitz ranked as the number 1 venture capital firm by Investor Rank, based on the firm’s networks and level of syndication with other venture firms. Andreessen ranked number 10 on the 2011 Forbes Midas List of Tech’s Top Investors while he and Horowitz ranked number 6 on Vanity Fair’s 2011 New Establishment List and number 1 on CNET’s 2011 most influential investors list. As of March 27, 2014, the firm is managing $4 billion in assets with the closing of its fourth fund at $1.5 billion.
In addition to Andreessen and Horowitz, the firm’s general partners include John O’Farrell, Scott Weiss, Jeff Jordan, Peter Levine, Chris Dixon, Lars Dalgaard, Vijay Pande, Alex Rampell, and Martin Casado.
In August 2009, Andreessen Horowitz made its first investment, backing technology business management SaaS developer Apptio. In September 2009 the firm invested $50 million for 2 percent of Skype stock. The investment was largely seen as risky because many believed Skype would be crippled by intellectual property litigation (initiated by Skype’s founders) and direct competitive attacks from Google and Apple. "When we bought the company from eBay, many thought that Skype, like so many acquired technology companies, had lost its technical talent," Horowitz told The Wall Street Journal. "Through our research, we found that Skype had a core group of engineers who were completely dedicated to the mission. They stayed through the eBay acquisition and were hugely determined to make Skype the communications company of the future." The gambit paid off when Skype was sold to Microsoft in May 2011 for $8.5 billion.
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