Ben Horowitz on What Makes the Best Fundraising Pitch
Takeaways from a fireside chat between the a16z cofounder and speedrun GP Jonathan Lai
Ben Horowitz has been advising founders for decades.
In a recent fireside chat with a16z speedrun General Partner Jonathan Lai, Ben made the case that the fundamentals haven’t changed nearly as much as people think. Strategy is still about articulating a clear “why.” Product management is still about shipping the right product at the right time. And the best fundraising pitch is still the one you actually believe.
What has changed is the landscape around those fundamentals. And there are massive new opportunities hiding in plain sight, if you know where to look.
Watch the talk in full below, or read on for five takeaways that stood out to us.
1. Your Story Is Your Strategy. Write It Down.
Horowitz opened with a point that sounds simple but that most founders get wrong: your company’s story and its strategy are the same thing. Not adjacent. Not related. The same. And if you aren’t constantly rewriting that story as you learn, your strategy is drifting without anyone noticing.
“The story of the company is also the strategy of the company. Nobody’s got some strategy in their back pocket that’s entirely secret and then a story that’s different.”
He pushed founders to write it in long form, because that forces the most discipline. The story answers the “why”: Why does this company exist? Why should someone join? Why should someone invest? If people know the why, Horowitz argued, you don’t even have to tell them the what.
“The problem that founders have is it doesn’t feel like work. ‘What are you doing today?’ ‘Oh, I’m working on my story.’ That doesn’t sound like work. But it’s probably one of the most important parts of the job.”
2. In the AI Era, Hire for Creativity and Relationships
Asked what traits founders should prioritize when hiring, Horowitz pointed to two that Silicon Valley has historically undervalued: creativity and relationship-building. AI already handles the grind-it-out tasks. What it can’t replicate is someone who walks in with original ideas or who can build and maintain high-fidelity relationships.
“If you don’t have instincts around those things, I don’t know that all the AI in the world can help you. Whereas the grind-them-out tasks, AI is already really good at.”
He illustrated this with a story from his own firm. They had built a legendary marketing organization, but it was rooted in 2009-era traditional media. It wasn’t until they brought in people who were genuinely creative about new media that the firm could break through on that front. Original thinking, Horowitz noted, is rarer than people assume.
3. “Right Product, Right Time” Is Still the Only Job
Horowitz’s essay Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager has become required reading in product circles. But the origin story is more blunt than most people realize. He wrote it because he was furious at seven PMs who were doing everything except the one thing he needed from them.
“I was so f***ing mad at them because I was like, ‘You people are doing everything but your job.’ You’re writing these requirements, you’re running around, pitching customers this and that. It’s a lot of work. But your job is: right product, right time. And if you don’t give me the right product at the right time, I don’t give a f*** what you do.”
When Lai asked whether the AI landscape changes the PM role, Horowitz was characteristically direct. The landscape doesn’t change the job. It’s still about “right product, right time.”
“You sound like my f***ing product managers. ‘Oh, now the landscape is different. I won’t write a PRD, I’ll write a prompt.’ Okay, great. Is it going to get you the right product, right time? If not, it doesn’t matter… And if you can’t do that, then Opus 4.6 can do all those tasks. No problem.”
4. Build Where There Are Shortages
Asked about the most exciting opportunities for founders, Horowitz pointed to areas where there are shortages. If there’s unlimited demand for AI tokens, the interesting question becomes: what supply-side bottlenecks can you solve?
“We’ve got an electricity shortage, chip shortage, token shortage. We’re going to have a cooling shortage. There’s all kinds of levers that you can pull to alleviate some of those shortages, and those will be valuable.”
There are examples Ben pointed to, like a16z’s decision to back Heron Power, a company building power transformers, because the shortage is so severe that it’s a bottleneck for new power plant construction. Horowitz also flagged a second category: long-standing problems of humanity, like cancer, that could become solvable thanks to new technology.
5. The Best Fundraising Pitch Convinces You First
When the conversation turned to fundraising, Horowitz’s advice cut against the instinct most founders have when walking into a pitch meeting: trying to figure out what the investor wants to hear. Instead, you should be able to convince yourself first:
“Being able to articulate why you’re building this company in a way that convinces even you that you should re-join your company is really the thing. If you can convince yourself completely that this is the greatest freaking idea in the world, then that’s the most compelling thing… The mistake people make in fundraising is they go, ‘Well, what does Ben want here? Does he want to see a graph like this? Does he want to know this about market size?’ That’s very hard to figure out, and you usually get it wrong. But you can know: how would I convince myself to join this company, or invest in this company? That always works the best.”
The reason is practical, not philosophical. A pitch built on what you believe is a pitch you can’t get talked out of. The worst outcome in a fundraising meeting is someone poking a hole in your narrative and you folding, because the argument was never yours to begin with.
“It’s kind of like a bad way to start a relationship. ‘I’m going to pretend to be this other person and then you’re going to like me, but then we’re going to get together and you’re going to find out the real me.’ That tends not to work out either.”
Thanks to Ben Horowitz for sharing his insights with our founders. And for more weekly dives into the world of early stage startups, subscribe below.
Story can literally separate 2 companies with the exact same product - one will get funded and become a leader, other will fight for scraps for 3 years and then the whole founding team will leave to do something else
The story is the strategy, especially when you have nothing else. This seems obvious but it's increasingly more difficult for folks to remember b/c building is so much easier now.
Don't get it twisted motherf*cker! LOL.