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Andreessen's Secret Plan To Find the Next Netscape
Hugh Pickens writes "CNN reports that Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen has raised $300 million to launch a new venture capital firm that aims to reinvent the way money is doled out in Silicon Valley while reflecting Andreessen's unwavering view that the Internet will soon take over all aspects of our lives and that online services won't merely supplement your TV viewing or newspaper reading, but will replace those activities altogether. Andreessen, on the board of Facebook and an angel investor in Twitter, says that technology moves so quickly that only the young can keep up with what the latest stuff can do. 'So the 24-year-old coming out of Stanford will have a view of technology that the 29-year-old — who was 24 just five years ago — would never think of,' say Andreessen. 'We love that kind of thing.' Andreessen thinks that when companies are acquired too quickly, innovation slows down, and he says that YouTube might have come up with a path to profitability faster if it wasn't a part of Google. 'It is hard for big ones to out-execute up-and-comers,' Andreessen says. 'Our secret plan is to watch what gets acquired and fund the next company. A good template is to fund companies doing whichever the next-generation product would have been.'"
I'm obsolete at 36.
Don't worry about it. This is so brain dead ignorant on so many levels it is hardly even worth thinking about no less worrying.
Good luck, Marc. Good thing you are using mostly other people's money.
Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
It is hard for big ones to out-execute up-and-comers
Funny quote, coming from a guy whose company was crushed by Microsoft.
"So the 24-year-old coming out of Stanford will have a view of technology that the 29-year-old â" who was 24 just five years ago â" would never think of," say Andreessen. "We love that kind of thing."
Great. More age discrimination in software development hiring practices.
I'm obsolete at 36.
I know a lot of 20-25 year old people in universities. My 60+ year old dad keeps up with technology, especially internet technology, better than any of them. Andreeson's delusional thinking shouldn't be trusted.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Good luck, Marc. Good thing you are using mostly other people's money.
Smart people know it takes money to make more money.
Brilliant people realize it doesn't have to be their own money.
He doesn't have a perspective, he has a line of bullshit.
The "only the young can be this innovative" line is an old one. The basic premise is that the reason why the 50 year olds with all the money don't understand the idea is because they're old, not because the idea is full of shit. It works because a lot of 50 year olds are afraid they're old and out of touch and will pretend the idea is good to seem young, sort of an emperors new clothes type of thing if you see what I mean.
This guy doesn't really believe his own bullshit, he just wants to make a lot of money out of pretending he does.
but hire some old people to run the company. Big ideas and lots of money don't always work out well if you don't have someone experienced steering the ship.
But When you look at Microsoft, Apple, google, facebook, Sun, netscape,... it is hard to dismiss entirely.
This really has a lot less to do with innovative ideas and pioneering and a lot more to do with risk. When you are 24, without a spouse, kids, and a mortgage to worry about, taking on the risk to build the "next big thing" is a lot easier.
However, taking the long shot on the next big thing while putting your children's ability to eat on the line is a lot harder, and some would say even irresponsible. For every Facebook and Twitter, there's a thousand things that failed in bankruptcy.
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What IT sectors are more important than the ones I listed
A few websites make up the sum of "IT Sectors"? Oh wow. You really do have a very narrow world-view.
Well okay then, let's try these on for size.
The Altair Microcomputer - Ed Roberts in his mid-thirties
The Java programming language - James Gossling, mid-thirties.
The Internet - Several people, all in the 30's and 40's -- including Vint Cerf, now VP at Google
C - K&R, thirties
Ruby - "Matz", early thirties
PKI - Several people, but Diffie, Hellman, etc were all in their thirties
The Mouse AND Graphical User Interface - Douglas Engelbart, forties
The Web - Tim Burners-Lee, mid-thirties
The relational database, Edgar F. Codd - late forties
I would say ALL of these far, FAR outweigh TWITTER in terms of "IT importance".
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