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

[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

[iamapizza]

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

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".

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.

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.