1: “Ben, think about how you might run the business if capital were free.”

That was the advice Andy Rachleff of Benchmark Capital gave Ben Horowitz, who was the CEO of Loudcloud, a startup focused on network security, scaling, and disaster recovery.

The year was 1999.

Ben and Loudcloud co-founder  Marc Andreessen were coming off the spectacular sale of  Netscape to AOL for $4.2 billion.

Benchmark invested $15 million … continue reading

1: The summer of 1995 was a dizzying time for the people working at Netscape.

In August of that year, the company went public.

“The Netscape initial public offering (IPO) was both spectacular and historic,” Ben Horowitz writes in The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers.

“The stock initially priced at $14 per share, but a last-minute decision doubled the … continue reading