Microsoft has been a helpful partner for Databricks. So the board and the CEO decided to let Microsoft invest. : That's changed under Satya Nadella, according to investor Ben Horowitz, whose firm Andreessen Horowitz just co-invested alongside Microsoft in Databricks, a start-up with software for processing large-scale data inpublic clouds. Microsoft is "truly an outstandingly good partner, which is really an amazing thing, just because if you go back to the '90s, Microsoft didn't have that reputation," Horowitz said. In the old days, there were two things that made Microsoft difficult to partner with, Horowitz said.