When Andreessen Horowitz Has a Sticky Situation to Solve, It Calls ‘The Wolf’

Last year, Alex Bouaziz, CEO of $17 billion payroll startup Deel, was several months into an escalating legal battle with an archrival, Rippling, when he texted one of his investors, Ben Horowitz, about an issue.

He alerted Horowitz to a recent podcast in which Rippling CEO Parker Conrad had criticized Horowitz’s venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, for standing by Deel amid a corporate spying scandal. (Rippling had sued Deel in March 2025, accusing it of paying a Rippling employee to snoop on Deel’s behalf.)

Bouaziz assured Horowitz someone was handling the matter. “Mark (the wolf) is on this,” he wrote in a text message that emerged last month as part of the litigation between Deel and Rippling.