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... build a company. You need to really go for it if you're gonna do this, otherwise you guys should stay in school."show more

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

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

w story

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

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?

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

Thanks for sharing this

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

Semper Fidelis

@DanielleFong I hope this happen to us @Kavanahio

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

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.

that was smart. really smart.

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

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

Totally agree with this