Ben Horowitz and Ali Ghodsi: How to Run a Billion-Dollar Business Ben Horowitz founded Loudcloud in the middle of the dot-com bust and sold it for 1.6 billion, then led Andreessen Horowitz from its founding to 46 billion in committed capital. Ali Ghodsi co-founded @Databricks, stepped in as CEO during a crisis, and led it to a valuation of over 100 billion. In this episode of “Boss Talk”, Ben and Ali join a16z General Partners Sarah Wang and Erik Torenberg to share founder war stories, how to hire and make deals, how to keep culture intense without burning employees out, and why founders should raise their ambitions even higher. 00:00 Boss Talk returns 01:01 Why Ali became CEO of Databricks 09:45 From academic to CEO 16:00 Radical candor feedback 19:10 Scaling intensity and culture 31:55 The Microsoft deal strategy 39:00 Setbacks and sealing the partnership 42:05 Building vs buying 54:55 Turning down acquisition offers 1:03:45 Key pivots, founding team legacy @alighodsi @bhorowitz @eriktorenberg @sarahdingwang(a16z)