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Ben Horowitz cosigned the Databricks co-founders in 2013, when they were Berkeley academics. " When I met with them, they were like, 'We need to raise $200,000.'" "I said, 'I'm not gonna write you a check for $200,000. I'll write you a check for $10 million.'" "You need to... show more

a16z

1,080,619 subscribers

146,905 views • 3 days ago •via X (Twitter)

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16 Comments

a16z3 days ago

w/ @lennysan on Lenny's Podcast (Sep 2025)

Max Bern3 days ago

Asked for 200k and he said "here's $10m become a company." Not sure if that'd scare or excite me.

richard3 days ago

w story

NotaDEV3 days ago

most of us are still waiting on the 200k, let alone the 50x version

Abhishek kothari3 days ago

Wild that the investor had to talk the founders into a bigger swing. What did he see in the Databricks team that they hadn’t seen in themselves yet?

Youth3 days ago

The scarce skill after the capability jump is still falsification, not more drafts.

sofi e,3 days ago

Thanks for sharing this

Larry Pu3 days ago

Raising too little money could extremely limit the runway, which can result in failure of company. Investors know that

Bobby3 days ago

Semper Fidelis

Gustavo Hernandez3 days ago

@DanielleFong I hope this happen to us @Kavanahio

why3 days ago

That’s a wild gap between the check they asked for and the one he wrote. A very early bet on the team.

Gary Drucker, CIC3 days ago

Two Berkeley academics starting a company need a general liability insurance policy first. A 10 million dollar check without a certificate of insurance is a claim waiting to happen. I would have called them the same day.

Rob Meder3 days ago

that was smart. really smart.

Ivan Damnjanovic3 days ago

Databricks is pretty good, but I haven't seen their roadmap?

Crio Songo3 days ago

That's the top-tier investor's vision, this bet totally paid off for a16z.

࣪˖ sophie m.3 days ago

Totally agree with this

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