Andreesen "Grows Up"

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."

Comments

What was he doing in 1991?

[seizer]

What was our posterboy doing in 1991? That's right, posting to alt.sex about his fave porn films.

Don't believe me?

You should.

Re:What was he doing in 1991?

[Ratbert42]

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.

'The Economist' is guilty of wishful thinking

[Jack William Bell]

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

Re:'The Economist' is guilty of wishful thinking

[Reality Master 101]

The Internet's greatest impact has been on the the voice it gives the public. Business is just using it as a tool, people use it to invoke change in the systems that regulate their lives.

That's pretty arguable. I mean, name one major social change that has happened as a result of the Internet. Sure, we're communicating faster, but has it actually provided a clear social change? Not to say it never will, but so far there just hasn't been much.

On the other hand, there has been huge changes in business. Not so much in retail, but in business-to-business data communications. That's where you see the major upheaval, and it's almost invisible to the average person. Setting up a data link between companies used to be a major operation of running leased lines, now it's completely trivial.

Competing with microsoft

[Edmund Blackadder]

"Another decision, made early on, was that the new firm should not compete with Microsoft. "

It is really nice of mr Andersen (i know its misspelled) to think that he can choose not to compete with Microsoft, but that is not how things work.

He was not trying to compete with microsoft when he made netscape either.

Ultimately microsoft decides whether you compete with them or not.

So i think he should have said. "another desicision, made early on was to pray that microsoft doesnt come in and destroy our bussiness again".

triumphalism

[uke78]

Do you detect the condescension toward 'geeks'? It's typical of biz articles to blame the dot com debacle on 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. Like "yes we 'suits' knew it all along." Tech people built these (crappy) companies but brokerage houses and greedy investors (all of us) pumped up the price bubble. So many people lost so much money not because of naive college CS students. It was because of bad advice and stock hype from wall street institutions. It would be interesting to see how many billions in profits the institutions made off of average investors. They got in right at the beginning of IPOs, rode them up, and sold for 100%, 200%, 700% profit. We held the stocks at those high valuations and watched them fall to earth.

Re:triumphalism

[nomadic]

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.

Anybody else find this a bit depressing

[Edmund Blackadder]

"These days he wears a smart suit, rather than a denim shirt and jeans. He is a manager, not a keyboard jockey. He last wrote a line of code, he says, in 1994. The super-fast Mercedes and an impractical military vehicle that previously belonged to Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Hollywood star, are gone; he now drives a low-key sport-utility vehicle instead.
"

Any body else find this passage depressing? Its not that he has grown up as much as he has been assimilated made to conform.

Now he wears the suit and drives the SUV. A low key SUV, mind you (there is so much irony about an SUV being low key).

In a related matter isnt it hilarious that the Economist has to explain that Arnold is a Hollywood star. Not that any reader wouldnt know who arnold is but they would love to pretend they dont.

Imposter Boy

[deanj]

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.

God forbid. . .

[J23SE]

You ever get into a position of some power, and some jackass starts digging up crap from your early days. It doesn't matter, he wouldn't find anything 'naughty', because we know you, like all of us, are perfect. It's irrelevant whether one posts on slashdot, jacks off to porn, or whether he or she posts to alt.sex.fluffy-toys.barney in his or her free time. That's personal. Don't let personal interfere with professional. Perfect example that most slashdotters should be familiar with now: Nash. I could go around saying:

What was our posterboy doing in 1963? That's right, hanging around gay bars looking to satisfy his fetishes.

Who cares? The man's a genius. Let him do with his frickin' free time as he wishes. Not all succesful people have to be bereft of life, humor, or recklessness. Not all successful people are perfect. Some are. . . guess what, they're boring.

Netscape failed b/c MS abuses its power

[dh003i]

The only reason why Netscape failed is b/c MS abused its monopoly power to crush it. Integrating IE into Windows when competitors can't do that for lack of knowledge about Windows gave MS an unfair advantage in the browser market, because their browsers inherently load faster than other equally-poorly coded browsers (actually, part of IE is ALWAYS loaded in Win9x, as that's what the file browser is).

And contrary to what this idiot in the Economist says, "growing up" for the internet does not mean conforming to the previous business regime and becoming nothing more than TV on speed, nothing more than a huge space for corporatization.

Contrarily, the internet is growing up as it realizes its full potential -- more and more user-interaction: more "grass roots" power. As time progresses, the ratio of non-corporate:corporate web-sites will become larger, as: (1) The number of people in this world is increasing faster than the number of corporations; (2) Many people have interest in creating sites or putting information online (not only via web-sites, but via P2P); (2) The bandwidth and computing power becoming available to consumers is increasing. P2P and file-sharing technologies represent a sign of maturity for the internet.

But really, using the word "maturity" in reference to the internet is nonsense. The internet is flexible, and new uses for it will be found continually. There is no "goal" for what the internet should become. It will simply evolve, step by step, web-site by website, idea by idea.

I feel very sorry for anyone who's mind is so small, who's imagination is so bleak, that (s)he can only think of the internet as ultimately useful as an avenue of corporatization and commercialization.

Re:LoudCloud can't compete either

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Yes, he should blame himself. Just like *censored religious denomination* should blame themselves for the *censored historical event*, instead of the *censored german political party*. Just like the blacks should blame themselves for slavery. Or perhaps even like rape victims, they do dress like sluts, you know.

This isn't a flame. Netscape did many stupid things, like many big companies do stupid things. All of which are fair game, in my book. But, it is commonly accepted that they fell victim to M$, and that M$ cheated. A court of law ruled as such. It is always the criminal's fault, not the victim's. That said... potential crime victims do need to be careful.

*** I self censored this... didn't feel like being the first person to compare M$ to *censored german political party*.

poster boy not so impressive

[raincrow]

Having sat across the table from Mr. Andreessen in a couple of meetings, I have to say that the man is less than impressive. He comes off as an empty-headed suit, a trophy for his sales staff to parade in front of clients.

(Background: LoudCloud was attempting to take over my former employer's web operations; not just make a pitch for services, but actively -- and with much hostility on the part of their sales team -- denigrate the infrastructure we had built in our own data center and convince upper management that we were being negligent in our work. We ended up fighting them off by showing that they would have had to lose money on us for several years in order to provide us equivalent services for less cost. They pressed on for months, fueled by our CEO's irrational desire to have Andreessen as a personal friend. The highlight of my career there was the day we canceled our letter of intention with LoudCloud.)

At a meeting in which his local and regional salesmen were in a shouting match with us (my favorite comment from their regional sales director: "You'll never be able to keep up with your little shareware schemes!" -- this was in response to our use of Apache/mod_perl), Mr. Andreessen sat there, first looking at us all as if we were speaking in a language he didn't understand. When talk turned to leasing schedules and other evidence against LoudCloud's value proposition, he became bored and began checking email on his RIM. Eventually he went and made a phone call at the other end of the room, and then sat down away from us so he could fill out his forms for a Federal security clearance (after the meeting I had to show him where our FAX machine was so he could get it in under deadline).

That's how he behaves in meetings with potential clients -- clients that his staff spend insane amounts of money and energy to woo, and bring him in to impress the savages. When we finally ceased talks with LoudCloud, he was very petulant and sent our CEO a near-illiterate email message about how disappointed he was that we had chosen not to contract their services. I understand the CEO still tries to woo him on occasion, despite.

He may very well be the richest (or luckiest) media darling I've ever shaken hands with. I am pretty certain he's also the most shallow.

they're all sheep

[xeno]

This article in the Economist is a heap of paternalistic claptrap. I usually respect most of the thinking that comes out of the Economist even if I don't agree with it, enough that I'm a paid subscriber. But the implication of this article is that the dotcom era was a childish tangent and that the technology industry has now grown up and realized how the real world works is a gross oversimplication at best, and more likely just hogwash. The technology industry has not reverted to the domain of the "suits" as the article implies. True, many of the internet revolutionaries have donned ties and pantsuits and risen through the ranks into executive management. Even Phil Zimmerman sold his soul to NAI. But there has been a fundamantal change in how the technology business world works.

To wit: You don't judge the severity of a climate change by seeing how well the oldest and fattest animals are. Many of the dead dotcoms were old-school organizations that took on new names and attempted to shovel their wares onto the internet, only to fail miserably. Although Microsoft gained a lot from the dotcom era, it's worth noting that Microsoft was the domain of "suits" from shortly after its inception. Gates himself railed against open code as far back as anyone can remember, insisted that the Internet was irrelevant to the software market, and has only recently noted that security in network-connected applications is of some importance. Microsoft stock has essentially plateaued -- it's been bouncing around $50-70 for about two years, and dividends are not paid to shareholders. The days of MSFT stock splits leading to the purchase of a new house are over. Microsoft may be a reliable internal moneymaker for some time to come, but it's no longer a realistic investment growth vehicle. Likewise the traditional model technology product business have suffered -- the computer hardware industry has become a lean area, squeezing the life out of traditional middle markets (and driving it online). Traditional old-school service organizations (KPMG and the like) have laid off tens of thousands.

On the other hand, new types of businesses are having an interesting go, and there's been a *lot* of irreversable change. Who'da thunk that Redhat could actually reach profitability? Proprietary networking protocols are dead. Sendmail has been commercialized. Apple has adopted an open-source core, and is now the world's most prolific UNIX software company. Major movies are being rendered with open-source code on clustered commodity computers. More women than ever are finding paths to executive status and power through the technology sector. The center of innovation in browser code is coming from Mozilla, with code more stable than either IE or Netscape on Windows. Java/J2EE has finished .NET's lunch, cleared the table, and taken a nap, and Microsoft doesn't even know it yet. Napster and its progeny have likewise insured the irrelevance of the existing recording industry giants (and the death of their ethically clouded business model). A little upstart company (Verisign) that issues virtual identity credentials bought a company that issues virtual addresses (Network Solutions), and has become the megalith that we should all be terrified by. And IBM, recognizing that there's good money to be made in services rather than only ownership of intellectual property, has hybridized itself through such things as Linux, and become much stronger for it.

The dotcom world has grown up and joined the old world? I don't think so. Surely anyone who thinks about it for more than a minute can see the clear differentiation between dotcom-era companies that had good ideas such as Palm, and the multitudes of con artists whose shell corporation names are enumerated on the likes of fuckedcompany.com. What's happened is that the dotcom survivors (the ones who actually had ideas and value) have learned to adapt in ways that position them for survival (accepting small but dependable margins), and surprising dominance in others. Some are successfully selling things that are openly available. Others are successfully selling services where the old-school said there was no need or opportunity. The curious thing is that the old-school property sellers (software, music) are being slowly killed by the new-school service/access sellers, and the old-school service sellers are being slowly killed by the new-school open-source/property sellers who find smaller margins attractive. Only in the White House and the oil industry have we returned to the glory days of the 80's and early 90's (and after people look at the balance sheets, the next election will take care of that).

Jon

Apples and Oranges

[FallLine]

One word: Quicken.

Yes, it is possible to defeat Microsoft. It's hard, but not impossible.

Quicken, in Microsoft's eyes, was nothing more than an opportunity to make some more money and not even THAT much. Netscape, on the other hand, was percieved by Microsoft as being a direct threat to its core businesses. It was believed at the time that as these services moved online both the operating system (windows) and the applications would become marginalized by Netscape and like web browsers. Thus, Microsoft played by an entirely different rule book. In the case of Quicken, it would only make sense to spend less than the potential size of the market. But in the case of Netscape, there was no price; the application itself was almost besides the point. Thus, Microsoft was willing to loose money hand over fist to takeover that market, because loosing the market meant gambling with Microsoft's whole business.

You simply can't compete against that in the business world. When your competitor is not only playing with a stacked deck but also doesn't care about winning for its own sake, then you have a real problem. As tough as things may be for companies like Quicken, it's just not impossible in that same sense. Besides which, Quicken established themselves very early on, before Microsoft became quite the behemoth that they are today. Try getting the financial community behind you for a novel product/service in ANY business that Microsoft takes seriously -- no matter how good your idea and your positioning is, it's just not going to happen.