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Hard Knocks, Age Transform Marc Andreessen
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Marc Andreessen, the brain behind Netscape, has spent the past several years engaged in an old-fashioned pursuit: rebuilding a traditional software company, Opsware, and trying to make it profitable, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'That he is making progress will be evident next week when the company expects to report a hefty quarterly revenue increase. In the process, he has settled down personally, morphing from technical whiz kid into serious businessman — the kind who delegates authority, makes sales calls in suits and dabbles in philanthropy. His experience helping bring Opsware back from the brink of financial disaster — in 2001, the company, then called Loudcloud Inc., staged a disappointing IPO and later had to completely overhaul its business to stay afloat — also has been formative, those who know him say.'"
"Hopefully it doesn't become another netscape."
i cations_Corporation]Wikipedia[/url]:"Netscape had a successful IPO on August 9, 1995. The stock was to be offered at $14 per share; a last-minute decision doubled the initial offering to $28 per share; the stock's value reached $75 on the first day of trading, which was nearly a record for a stock's first-day gain. The company's revenues doubled every quarter in 1995"
Actually, I'm sure he'd like it to become another netscape; netscape was the final word in browsing back in the day (before msie was standard). The problem was it fell behind it's competitors and sort of lost focus.
References: [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Commun
Anyone else think the comments just weren't rendering right before they turned off ABP and saw ads?
I assume you are kidding, but "sales calls" includes in person visits. Like as in "calling on a client." It isn't just telephoning...
It is interesting how important attire can be. It reminds me of that picture of the early staffers at Microsoft with the caption "Would you have invested?" But on the flip side, even with a good idea, it is tough to make sales in sandals and shorts....
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
I remember when Andreesen started talking about his new Loudcloud company, and I was certain it was going to fail. It had nothing going for it that could make it any money other than Marc Andreesen's name. Now, it appears I was at least partially right, since the only way they've managed to keep from going out of business is to completely change what it is their company does. Even now, it's not really profitable, and it's trying to compete in a space already dominated by much larger companies. If this company wasn't being run by one of the biggest names in the Internet revolution, it would have run out of investors years ago.
It sort of reminds me of a company I used to work for that has continually stayed just above the edge of bankruptcy by completely changing its business model (and its name) to fit the trend of the moment. It started out as a cable company, became an ISP during the boom, then became a wireless ISP, and now it's a real estate company.
Actually, I'm sure he'd like it to become another netscape; netscape was the final word in browsing back in the day (before msie was standard). The problem was it fell behind it's competitors and sort of lost focus.
Netscape was a great business (and had a great browser) when it was sold to AOL for $4.2 billion in 1999. Most of the issues with the browser started after that.
No Sigs!
Look up your favorite picture of Garfield. Then look up your favorite picture of Bill the Cat.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Netscape's browser had already been soundly defeated by 1999. The bloated pig that was Netscape 4.0 (Netscape Communicator) was released in 1997, and pretty much spelled the end for Netscape's browser business. That was when the most serious issues with the browser from a technical perspective happened. By 1999, Netscape had already started the Mozilla Project, and had essentially abandoned the Netscape browser as a source of revenue.
AOL bought Netscape for so much money primarily because of its netscape.com portal site, which at the time was one of the most popular sites on the Internet.
Why, Mr. Andreessen? Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you're fighting for something? For more than just your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom? Or truth? Perhaps peace? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Andreessen. Vagaries of perception. The temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself, although only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Andreessen. You must know it by now. You can't win. It's pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Andreessen? Why?! Why do you persist!?
the kind who delegates authority,
Yup. That's one of the first signs.
makes sales calls in suits
That's the seventh sign, unless you're hasidic, then it's the third, although gnostics numer it fourth.
and dabbles in philanthropy.
And that's the bottom. Darth Vader gave lots of surplus Imperial cheese to orphans. Emperor Ming would write checks to the Mongo Salvation Army. And then there's Ronald McDonald House as an attempt to karmically balance the hideous doings of that evil clown. It's all just a front.
Marc Andreessen, short of Jaron Lanier, the most overrated poseur in tech. Glory hound, marginal programmer, front man for Jim Clark, thew guy who threw away the biggest tech opprotunity since M$ sold IBM DOS. Check out this article "Imposter Boy":w ww.chrispy.net/marca/gqarticle.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20030212202753/http://
The fact that he gets glowing articles for wearing a suit is a true case of the soft bigotry of low expectations.
This company is the former LoudCloud. They changed their name and basically became an entirely different company with an entirely different business plan, but it is still technically the same company.
His new company is called Ning.
Loudcloud was a managed hosting provider, that also made software that allowed servers/network devices to be monitored, deployed and controled with a small number of highly technical staff. The benefit to the customer is/was that they don't have to pay for the high priced technical staff that is needed to host their site. Loudcloud had some of the best people I have ever worked with. It was a great place to work at. Sadly, because of some mistakes, Loudcloud ended up running very low on cash and management decided to sell the hosting part of the company to EDS (which already had a hosting division).
If you have the chance to look at Opsware's newest products (NAS & SAS), you should. I recently saw a demo of the NAS product (Network Automation tool), and it is super slick. The product flat out rocks. You can manage all of your switches, firewalls, routers, and load balancers, through a very slick web interface. A very nice product.
Marc Andreessen is just a lucky guy in the right place at the right time. Was he amazingly technical and a visionary? Not really, the basic concepts, technology and applications were already there for him. Besides it was the suits and their VC buddies at the time that really made Netscape what it was.
Marc Andreessen stood on the shoulders of people like Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, Robert Kahn, Jon Postel, etc. Visionary? No. Opportunist? Yes!
I don't knock the guy for trying to make a buck. I knock those in the media and the Geekasphere that try to make him out for what he is not. These are the same people that probably still think Bill Gates was programmer/engineer/scientist/visionary/inventor of all things Micro$oft.
Maybe you are not aware than Marc Andreessen worked at NCSA and invented Mosaic, upon whose layout every modern web browser is based. So basically nearly every aspect of the web interface you were looking when you posted this troll was invented by him.
Considering Mosaic was the first web browser to run on Windows, it is very much accurate to credit Marc Andreessen with setting the World Wide Web into motion and bringing it to the people. Meanwhile Microsoft missed the boat and only entered the browser market when it became very obvious that this Netscape thing was becoming very profitable and they wanted a piece. They then copied every aspect of the browser, packaged it into their operating system, thereby locking people in unknowingly, and to this day they continue to willfully 'invent new features'(read: break agreed upon standards) in order to keep other browsers out of their cheaply earned monopoly.
So. 'Visionary' turns out to be an apt label for him. Apt, I say!
Waaah, I'm the co-founder of Netscape! Waaah, everyone loves me, and I'm an icon of the dot-com industry!
Want some hard knocks? Try not working for 6+months because of the dot-com slump; try working your way back to your pre-dot-com salary from a figure less than half that once you WERE able to find a job!
stuff |
Who else read "Oopsware" instead of "Opsware"?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
So does Taco Bell, but no one apologizes for them.
...hard work and actual vision of people like Tim Berners-Lee .
Uh I think you misspelt Al Gore's name
I Like Pie...
Um, I don't know what aspects of the browser you're not supposed to "copy". Did you level that accusation at Opera too?
I don't know - by not copying it?
First of all Opera came after Mosaic(1992) and Internet explorer(1995) in 1996, and by that time the standard interface was entrenched in the popular consciousness. What you are saying here again proves my point. The fact that every browser since Mosaic has used basically the same interface layout invented by Andreessen pretty much proves that no one else has been able to envision something better. Just because browser layout seems so obvious to you now doesn't mean it was obvious back then - it just means you're so used to the interface that you've taken it for granted, which is actually a testament to its novelty. Back then it was quite an impressive feat to bring an intuitive user interface and graphical browsing to such a novel idea. The fact that Andreessen caught onto the necessity of bringing the Internet to regular citizens makes him exactly what an inventor is - something who finds a solution for an apparent need or desire.
Your memory must be failing. Both Andreessen and Jim Clark essentially claimed they had pretty much "invented" the "internet" time and time again back way when Netscape was the darling of the stock market and they had zero competitors.
I think you are inventing things out of thin air.
"Pretty much essentially claimed that they had pretty much 'invented' the 'internet" is different from *actually* claiming what he did do: that you brought the world wide web from obscurity into prosperity. Andreessen definitely gives credit to others when he talks about who brought the internet to fruition, but obviously he's not going shy away from claiming his integral role in the story.
I was young at the time but I don't ever recall Andreessen claiming that he was the sole or main inventor of the internet. All I ever remember he said, rightfully, was that he played an integral part in defining the world wide web as it is today and bringing it to the masses.. In fact he's on record for crediting Al Gore for a lot of the Internet development. For instance,
Everytime someone claims that someone else mistakenly claimed that they are responsible for the internet it turns out a) to be false and b) to be serving a political agenda.
And then they proceeded to run the company into the ground when the going got tough, proving that neither of them even qualified as decent businessmen
How exactly is forming a billion dollar company and selling it to AOL at a huge profit 'running it into the ground' and proviing that you are not 'even qualified as decent businessmen?'' That's success by any standard. Netscape didn't do as well as it could have, but you seem very willing to discount everything it's helped to give you to serve some weird polemic impulse in your head.
Zonk cut the original headline short- it was supposed to read:
"Hard Knocks, Age Transform Marc Andreessen into giant battle robot!"
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
It's not that creating something like Netscape was technically difficult. It's that it was the right idea, put together properly. It takes timing, vision, persistance and a bit of luck to make anything work. What have you created that we should know about?
Myspace? Jesus give me a week I can duplicate it.
Facebook? You cannot even search the "messages" you get. Christ how hard is that?
YouTube? Uh...?
None of these sites are that amazing. They were just there at the right time and place.
uh.. whatever success Opsware has/had is in large part due to their excellent CTO/spiritual leader and the go-to guy for their customers - Tim Howes. Andreesen's name helps and he has grown a lifetime in the last five years but is not the primary reason (imho) for Opsware's success.