Ben Horowitz - Backing America’s Future

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
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Hello and welcome, everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories, and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. If you enjoy these conversations and want to go deeper, check out Colossus, our quarterly publication with in-depth profiles of the people shaping business and investing. You can find Colossus along with all of our podcasts at colossus.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:15)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of PositiveSum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of PositiveSum. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of PositiveSum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit PSUMVC.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (2:43)
My guest today is Ben Horowitz, the co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz. Since its founding in 2009, A16Z has grown into one of the most influential firms in venture capital, reshaping how technology companies are funded and how power and ideas move through Silicon Valley and around the world. This conversation focuses on sides of Ben's stories you don't often hear. Ben reflects on the state of America, the people who shaped him including Nas, Andy Grove and his father, and shares why he chose to personally fund new technology for the Las Vegas Police Department. We also talk about how he thinks about A16Z's responsibility in shaping the trajectory of America, the scale of his ambition for the firm, and what he sees as the biggest risk factor facing the country. Please enjoy this great conversation with Ben Horowitz.
I think a fun place to begin, Ben, would be your take on the state of the country. What does it feel like to you in 2026? I know part of your mission is to directly impact the trajectory of the country. We'll talk about that a lot. But begin with what does the landscape, the playing field feel like to you today?

**Ben Horowitz** (3:44)
I think the tech sector is very, very healthy. America's competitiveness is very, very good. The entrepreneurship culture is outstanding. And that's the main thing I look at from my lens. If you look at, and I go kind of all over the world, and everybody wants Silicon Valley, like how can we have Silicon Valley in the UK? How can we have it in France? So they have a lot of the ingredients, right? They have great talent. They've got great universities.
They have like a definitely a worse regulatory environment and EU increasingly bad regulatory environment for entrepreneurship. But there's a cultural challenge where succeeding, doing something larger than yourself, making the world a better place, like those aren't things that young people feel like society values. And so the likelihood, if you're building a company of getting people to work for you and dedicate their life to a mission like that is just not that great. Whereas in the US it's amazing. I think the economy is in much better shape than people realize. We've done a lot of kind of things to stimulate it. We've got lower energy prices. We've got much less regulation. We've got more user-friendly tax code. And that's all starting to kick in now. From our perspective, I think the bigger thing is AI is going to impact everything. There's almost no problem you can think of that you can't go, Well, we have a real shot at solving that with AI. What were the big problems in the US? Autodesk. Well, we got an AI solution for that. Cancer, we have an AI solution for that. The fact that we've got a technology where we can address everything is a real new phenomenon. And all that's, I think, going to kick in like in a fairly major way over the next 12 to 24 months.