Eliot Horowitz

Horowitz received a B.S. in Computer Science from Brown UniversityBrown UniversityBrown University is a private nonprofit research university in Providence, Rhode Island, and a member of the Ivy League. Chartered by Rhode Island's colonial legislature in 1764, it is known for its undergraduate Open Curriculum, which has no common required core. Christina H. Paxson, president since July 2012, announced on August 3, 2026, that the 2026–27 academic year would be her last in office. As of October 1, 2026, the search for Brown's 20th president remained underway.Open the full entry and began his career at the online advertising company DoubleClick.⁠[1]

In January 2005 he co-founded the online search company ShopWiki and served as its chief technology officer until it was sold in November 2010.⁠[1]

Horowitz, Dwight Merriman and Kevin Ryan were all veterans of DoubleClick, later acquired by GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry, where scaling to serve more than 400,000 ads per second showed them the limitations of relational databases; seeking a more scalable and flexible solution, they founded MongoDB (formerly 10gen) in 2007.⁠[2]

From 2008 he served as MongoDB’s chief technology officer and as a member of its board of directors.⁠[1]

MongoDB’s proxy statement filed on May 21, 2020, disclosed that Horowitz, then 39, was resigning as chief technology officer and director and would leave on the date of the 2020 annual meeting, not standing for re-election to the board; he also served on the advisory board of the NYC Tech Talent Pipeline.⁠[1]

He left MongoDB a few months after the COVID-19 pandemic began and, while looking for his next project, built hobby devices including an automated cat feeder, a chess-playing robot and a backyard sprinkler system.⁠[3]

After more than a decade working on database technology at MongoDB, Horowitz set out in 2020 to build Viam, a programmable software stack for robotics. Viam, with its headquarters and robotics lab in New York City, aims to let engineers build, deploy and manage robotics applications from first prototype to global fleet.⁠[4]

Concluding that robotics hardware was advanced while software lagged behind, he spent about a year studying why better platforms for programming practical physical-world tools did not exist, then decided to turn the project into a startup and approached his former investors at Union Square Ventures, which led the seed round.⁠[3]

Viam closed a $45 million Series B round in March 2024.⁠[5][3]

On March 3, 2025, Viam announced a $30 million Series C round led by existing investor Union Square Ventures, with Battery VenturesBattery VenturesBattery Ventures is a global venture capital and private equity firm focused on technology companies, investing from seed-stage startups through growth investments and buyouts.Open the full entry, Neurone and other existing investors participating, bringing its total funding to $117 million; Horowitz, as founder and chief executive, said, “We hit important milestones last year and this raise will help us continue to achieve our goals.”⁠[5]

Horowitz declined to disclose the valuation and described Viam’s goal as helping companies manage “fleets of hardware devices.”⁠[3]

On December 12, 2024, Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry published “Building a $20B+ Open Source Business with MongoDB and Viam's Eliot Horowitz,” an episode of My First 16, the a16z series in which partner Seema Amble interviews B2B founders and chief executives about their first 16 major customers. Horowitz discussed building sustainable open source software tools, challenging OracleOracleOracle (Oracle Corporation) is a U.S. enterprise software and cloud computing company founded in 1977 by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates. Starting with relational databases, it expanded into enterprise applications, cloud infrastructure, hardware, and industry systems, and broadened its product range through acquisitions of companies such as Sun Microsystems, NetSuite, and Cerner.Open the full entry, MongoDB’s early go-to-market strategy and use of meetups to build community, why open source is a strategic business decision, the “five-second rule” for developer products, enterprise sales and recruiting, the difference between open source customers and users, and how demos help build enterprise trust.⁠[6]

The video was uploaded to the a16z YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channel on December 13, 2024.⁠[7]

Viam: Official website: https://www.viam.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[4]

MongoDB: Official website: https://www.mongodb.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]