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Andreesen "Grows Up"

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the aging-and-changing dept.

inah writes "The original poster boy for the old .com economy and how he's currently doing. "The poster-child who grew up" from The Economist."

4 of 281 comments (clear)

  1. 'The Economist' is guilty of wishful thinking by Jack+William+Bell · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The closing paragraph of the article reads:

    The Internet has changed, too, as Mr Andreessen's own journey from Netscape to Loudcloud illustrates. What was once the province of geeks is now ruled by suits. The web has become the basis of a vast and complex industry dominated by large companies. Even though it started as a consumer-led phenomenon, the Internet's greatest impact has been on business. There turned out to be very little money in selling "front-end" software such as browsers to consumers; but there were fortunes to be made at the "back-end" selling services, software, storage and hardware to companies. Loudcloud may be successful in its own way, but it will not be the Netscape of the decade, the dawn of a new world. The Internet, like its poster-boy, has grown up.

    This is clearly the kind of thing that the editors and readers of The Economist would like to believe about the Internet: The show is over, nothing more to see, move along everyone, move along. Too bad it is total tripe...

    Andreeson and LoudCloud are a real business now, true. And their revenue model is well designed and might actually work. But the Internet isn't about to turn into a buttondown, suit ruled, geeks don't make the rules anymore thing anytime soon. That is what happens to mature markets and, while the first gold-rush is over, the Internet is far from a mature market. There is still lots of room for someone with ideas to make a difference. What is less likely is that those ideas are worth twenty million in VC money.

    I'm afraid the suits are in store for a hard awakening if they think differently.

    Jack William Bell
    --
    - -
    Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
  2. Imposter Boy by deanj · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The article "Imposter Boy", is worth a read. This is the ONLY article I've ever seen from the perspective of the non-Netscape people of how all that Mosaic/Netscape got started. http://www.chrispy.net/marca/gqarticle.html ALL the other articles I've ever seen are from either Netscape's or Andreesen's perspective, perpetuating the myth of what really happened in the beginning. I've seen a lot of people comment on this article before, and I'll tell you most of the comments are "sour grapes, sour grapes". Well, just look at what the article says about people that worked at Netscape.

  3. Re:triumphalism by nomadic · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's typical of biz articles to blame the dot com debacle on tech workers.

    No it's not. They usually blame the management, not the tech workers.

    In particular biz journalists like to blame the young founders of these companies, as if their lack of seriousness and business experience caused the dot com crash.

    It WAS in a lot of way their fault. It was this sheer arrogance, this slavish devotion to fads and unproven business plans that caused a lot of these companies to tank.

  4. Re:What was he doing in 1991? by Ratbert42 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I still remember Usenet threads like this back when he started what became Netscape. Fascinating to go back and see the mindset at the time.