Ben

"While other venture firms seek out executive talent for their clients, Andreessen Horowitz goes further. It develops ties with the Valley’s best software engineers, designers, and product managers, helping them with introductions and career counseling. At times it connects these engineers and managers to one of its portfolio companies, but often there’s no direct payoff. It does the same for top Valley executives, much as CAA negotiated employment contracts for studio executives. Andreessen Horowitz aims to forge long-term relationships that might eventually prove helpful at a future start-up, or as part of future deal flow. And Marc and Ben’s thesis has worked brilliantly. They have rapidly established themselves as one of the nation’s top five venture firms, with prescient investments in Facebook, Skype, Stripe, Airbnb, GitHub, Instacart, Lyft, and Pinterest, among many others. As Marc told the New York Times, “We’ll wire up talent first with the goal of knowing and building relationships with all the best people. It’s more like a Hollywood talent agency.”"

"“Ben, you cannot let him keep his job, but you absolutely can let him keep his respect.”22 HEADS HELD HIGH IF YOU HAVE TO LET PEOPLE GO, BE GENEROUS, TREAT THEM WELL, AND CELEBRATE THEIR ACCOMPLISHMENTS."

"Stunned, he put the phone down. He did not believe what he had just heard, nor did he want to believe it. Surely it was not true. But what if it was? He did not feel as though there were any problems in his marriage. He and Katherine by then had three children—Ben, eight, Sophie, seven, and Nick, five. Outwardly, with their Takapuna home, a beach house north of Auckland, another house in Hawaii, any domestic help they wanted, a helicopter and, most importantly, all the family healthy and well, theirs was the very definition of a family that had it all. By any standards they led an enviable lifestyle. Now Heatley wondered if he knew anything at all. He had often been absent from his children’s lives—at work before they got up and sometimes still at work or at a dinner when they went to bed. Perhaps he did not know about his wife’s life, either."

"Back on the island, Heatley has brought his son Josh and some of Josh’s friends up from Auckland. They head off to play pool, though if Josh was with only his father, they would most likely first play chess. No chance for a competition slides by the pair. If they swim in the surf, they compete to see who can bodysurf furthest up the beach. They are keen on poker. In their Auckland house, at Maui and here on Moturua, chessboards are always set. Josh maintains in his head a lifetime tally of thousands of chess games with his father. The wins are, for now, slightly in his father’s favour. Cut-throat competition is the norm between Heatley and his sons. The Takapuna house where the children grew up had a tennis court adjoining the neighbour’s property. Ben, the eldest of the four children, recalls his brothers, his father and him playing tennis. ‘And, hell, those poor people next door! The moment we’re on the tennis court it’s all on, all of us yelling and all of us arguing because each of us wants to win.’ More often than not, the matches would end with two people not talking to each other. ‘But the next day, we’d put it behind us and do it over again.’ His sister is competitive too, he says, but displays it differently."

"His eldest and youngest children, Ben and Josh, share Heatley’s interest in finance and investment. However, there is potential difficulty for children following the same career path as a successful parent. Perhaps, being the eldest, the risk of living in his father’s shadow weighs most on Ben. For as long as he can remember, Ben has been interested in the commercial world but is conscious that at 27 his father was already floating Rainbow Corporation. ‘It sometimes makes me feel as though I’ve achieved very little by comparison,’ says Ben, who is gradually becoming more involved in managing some of the family’s investments. ‘Dad comes across very confidently in a business environment. He has everything under control and is impressive to watch. But from my observations, success in the business world can sometimes be a result of a deep insecurity or a sense of not being good enough. Business becomes the channel through which some people choose to prove their worth. So, on the face of it, yes, he is confident and we kids are too, but we’ve still got our fair share of insecurities.’"

"Perhaps even more importantly, Ben was not only the developer and owner of the Fontainebleau. He was also the general manager. He patrolled his kingdom with an eagle eye, criticising his staff when required but also praising and encouraging them. Not a day passed without Ben visiting every corner of his empire, greeting both staff and guests while his all-seeing eyes noted the tiniest of details. Maintaining high standards was, to him, imperative. It was, therefore, not a surprise that he discovered on his rounds a young man from South Africa, a guest at the hotel, who appeared to be asking lots of questions."