The Databricks story is incredible. Ali Ghodsi teaching himself to code on a Commodore 64 after fleeing Iran, then building a company a16z believed would be worth $2T, is wild. I love the framing of a16z as a temporal sovereign rather than just a VC fund, becuase that's exactly what they're building - power that compounds through scale. The $200k ask turned into a $10M check is such a perfect example of how they operate differentl than traditional VCs.
Packy, Excellent article. Great story. I will reread it again. I have been following A16Z for a long time. I remember when Ben spoke on a podcast more than 10 years back about his investment thesis and how he met Doug Cutting from Hadoop ( If my memory serves right). Also, on the same podcast, Ben talked about how he met Ali from Databricks (in fact it was not even called Databricks then). He mentioned about a startup in Berkeley that they are investing and wanted to keep it confidential. It came to be Databricks later. What a sea change in the last 12-13 years !!
Packy, I had unsubscribed from your Substack long ago. Reading this made me subscribe again. Keep writing more such stuff.
Welcome back!
The Databricks story is incredible. Ali Ghodsi teaching himself to code on a Commodore 64 after fleeing Iran, then building a company a16z believed would be worth $2T, is wild. I love the framing of a16z as a temporal sovereign rather than just a VC fund, becuase that's exactly what they're building - power that compounds through scale. The $200k ask turned into a $10M check is such a perfect example of how they operate differentl than traditional VCs.
Packy, Excellent article. Great story. I will reread it again. I have been following A16Z for a long time. I remember when Ben spoke on a podcast more than 10 years back about his investment thesis and how he met Doug Cutting from Hadoop ( If my memory serves right). Also, on the same podcast, Ben talked about how he met Ali from Databricks (in fact it was not even called Databricks then). He mentioned about a startup in Berkeley that they are investing and wanted to keep it confidential. It came to be Databricks later. What a sea change in the last 12-13 years !!
Woah!! Bringing the receipts from way back!
Yes, I missed the boat too, I should have joined this company : (
Nice artical, I gain a lot of inspiration from it