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.'"

Comments

age discrimination

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:age discrimination

[WindowlessView]

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.

Re:age discrimination

[jacquesm]

Don't bother getting hired, do your own thing and show them how it's done.

Re:age discrimination

[Colonel Korn]

"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.

Re:age discrimination

[MadKeithV]

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.

Re:age discrimination

[timeOday]

My 60+ year old dad keeps up with technology, especially internet technology, better than any of them.

Keeping up is one thing, pioneering is another. The myth of silicon valley whiz-kids is distasteful. But When you look at Microsoft, Apple, google, facebook, Sun, netscape,... it is hard to dismiss entirely.

Re:age discrimination

[iamapizza]

Yes, but I'm 5 years younger than you and am obsolete in ways that you cannot think of.

Re:age discrimination

[ShinmaWa]

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.

Re:age discrimination

[ShinmaWa]

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".

The value of secrecy

[Allicorn]

Said Andreessen, "Our secret plan is..." ...posted on a blog at NYtimes.com.

You're not doing it right!

2nd is the first loser

[Anonymous Coward]

So they'll fund the also-ran companies that no one wanted to buy?

Let's see- for YouTube, that would have been Break.com, Dailymotion, and about ten zillion other video startups that I am having trouble recalling at this point.

This sounds like a strategy out of an airport business book, but it needs a snappier tagline- something like "The Goldilocks Effect." You don't want the company that's too hot...

Listen to me, I lost to IE

[Anonymous Coward]

It is hard for big ones to out-execute up-and-comers

Funny quote, coming from a guy whose company was crushed by Microsoft.

obsolete already

[doti]

online services won't merely supplement your TV viewing or newspaper reading, but will replace those activities altogether.

Will replace?

For me, at least, it has replaced already.
Many years have passed since I bought my last newspaper, and I only watch TV for live football games.

Re:obsolete already

[Dystopian Rebel]

Congratulations! According to Andreesen's Law, you are 24 years old.

Great!

[Quiet_Desperation]

Ah. The old "youth is everything, experience is irrelevant" approach. The movers of this new culture can facebrag about it as they pass their hand me ups to their decrepit, tweetless, senile elders (anyone over 25).

Only for some people

[RJFerret]

Interesting, I'm now late 30s and frequently run across 20-somethings who have little to no computer/Internet interest. Some personality types want to interact socially in person and others want to read paper.

Sure libraries are accommodating new media, but they aren't eliminating the old, which still gets used. Attorneys and doctors continue to need paper.

His perspective generally sounds like a good one, but doesn't seem to recognize an entire segment of our population--like nearly everyone at the BBQ I was at on the 4th.

A friend there was laughing when her sister called to ask where/when fireworks might be shown, despite them having a computer in the kids playroom and their kids being able to search it faster than she could call her!

Re:Only for some people

[Eskarel]

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.

Re:Umm

[jacquesm]

He looks at how well they spell and use grammar.

Get your ideas from the young kids

[papasui]

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.

He won't...

[benjamindees]

And it doesn't matter. As the prototypical "obsolete" 29 year old from the example, I can tell you it doesn't matter whether the 24 year old is full of shit or not. Shit sells.

When I was applying to ivy league schools, literally every piece of advice I got was to lie out your ass. Lie about your achievements. Write your own recommendations. Just pull stuff out of thin air. Make it as flamboyant as possible, and as convincing as you can. As far as they know, you're a genius black inventor mathematician cellist who can write upside-down and backwards using your little toes. Books, articles, current and former students; they all said the same thing: Give admissions staffers the unbelievably entertaining bullshit they want to hear. Hell, you should even tell them that you have some plan to pay back the ridiculous loans they give you.

And judging by what I've witnessed over the last ten years, that was absolutely the correct advice. Yale, Harvard, the school doesn't even matter. Most of them didn't do well. Some didn't even graduate. But, one by one, a steady stream of the the best liars these institutions have to offer have stood up and lied over and over again to the rest of us and become filthy rich and wildly successful doing so. They have swindled us, stolen from us, violated our rights, led us into wars and destruction and profited greatly by it. All the while giving back to their alma maters in the process.

It doesn't matter that this group of people are investing millions of dollars into completely unproductive Web 2.0 bullshit with no viable revenue stream. It doesn't matter that the money they are frittering away is ultimately borrowed from foreigners, swindled from the elderlies' retirement funds, or doled out via government "stimulus".

It doesn't matter that they are sinking the US economy in the process, wasting an entire generation's productive efforts on shiny trinkets that will be unceremoniously duplicated by overseas competitors if by accident they ever attain any real value.

No, no. What matters is that they are productive, successful "entrepreneurs" who are "innovating". And if they can find an ambitious young 24-year-old with an idea to spy on his neighbor's porn surfing and advertise divorce lawyers to his wife, that'll be the next big thing. Because it'll be easy to patent and will give a 2% greater return than a business plan to manufacture automated fruit-pickers.