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The Problem With Marc Andreessen

blogs.reuters.com

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Re: The Problem With Marc Andreessen

#41

Post by mattmanser »

srconstantin wrote: post #19

You don't see something...Ponzi-scheme-ish about the industry? I may not be especially familiar with this, but it sounds like: 1. Man makes short-lived company that makes him rich quickly. 2. Man makes money investing in other short-lived companies that make their founders rich quickly. 3. Successful founders grow up to make money investing in still other short-lived companies. Maybe I'm totally misinterpreting this,…

Because there's the occasional hit to pay for all the ponzi schemes. So it ends up being not ponzi because it really does generate cash.

I have no idea if Marc actually has done anything at all with his life after mosaic apart from make a lot of terrible companies that sold well. The article seems to imply he's a total fraud. But I'll tell you who has.

Microsoft, Google, AOL, Yahoo, etc.

They all made lots of money and they're the ones paying silly sums of money to buy companies that they then almost consciously let rot, fester and die.

I think mainly so that no-one can accidentally get bigger than them and take them out. Imagine if someone bought facebook 5 years ago. It probably would be dead by now.

Re: The Problem With Marc Andreessen

#42

Post by nrao123 »

IF you apply the high standards that the author is applying to andreesen than there may not be more than a handful of entrepreneurs who meet that criteria. When apple eventually loses its luster 20 yrs from now, you could write an article saying what did Steve jobs achieve? It's the most idiotic article I have read about a person who started 3 really great companies.

Re: The Problem With Marc Andreessen

#43

Post by ma2rten »

wmf wrote: post #34
ma2rten wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why is this a bad thing? I don't see why it makes a difference if the company continues to exist on it's own or as part of another company.

True. I think the point is more that these companies made no profits while they were independent and then continued to make no profits after they were acquired; thus in retrospect the acquirers must have overpaid.

Except that this line of reasoning assumes that the people who run the acquiring company are morons. This is quite a strong assumption to make without any further evidence. I think neither of us knows enough about HP's fiances to make that claim (I presume you were talking about Opsware).

Re: The Problem With Marc Andreessen

#44

Post by andrewfelix »

I think the problem is with publications like Wired and Fast Company. They tend to gush and over exaggerate the achievements of their subjects while glossing over real problems. Everything is 'world changing', 'revolutionary' and 'disruptive'.

Fast Company is the worst offender. They rarely critically analyse anything.

Re: The Problem With Marc Andreessen

#45

Post by andrewfelix »

ReadEvalPost wrote: post #27
blader wrote: post #13

I don't understand. The man created the web browser, built multiple billion dollar companies, angel invested and sits on the board of Facebook, and is now one of the most well known VCs in the world - and this is saying what - that he's not as good as Felix thinks he could be? What the hell has Felix Salmon ever done? I'm seeing more and more of this: pundits and armchair entrepreneurs online who just can't help but…

What the hell has Felix Salmon ever done? Felix Salmon is a journalist. He provides value to the world by reporting or critiquing -- in this case, critiquing the notion that Andreessen and his business practices are worth venerating or emulating. That he has not built a successful start-up is entirely unrelated to that point, much in the same way the fact Roger Ebert isn't a director is unrelated to his critique of f…

>Felix Salmon is a journalist.

Exactly. Not being a successful VC does not preclude you from criticising a successful VC.

Re: The Problem With Marc Andreessen

#46

Post by aswanson »

Marc kicked off an information sharing revolution the likes of which humanity has never seen prior. Even if someone had come along a year later and made a browser the masses could use, that's still tantamount to a civilizational change delayed a year. Felix the Hater should reconsider.

Re: The Problem With Marc Andreessen

#47

Post by pedalpete »

unreal37 wrote: post #20
blader wrote: post #13

I don't understand. The man created the web browser, built multiple billion dollar companies, angel invested and sits on the board of Facebook, and is now one of the most well known VCs in the world - and this is saying what - that he's not as good as Felix thinks he could be? What the hell has Felix Salmon ever done? I'm seeing more and more of this: pundits and armchair entrepreneurs online who just can't help but…

I think there is a point in the original article that is perhaps overstated but nonetheless mainly true - Andreessen is being hailed as one of the great entrepreneurs of our time by Wired. But really, his main skill is building companies that don't make much money and selling them to other companies. He has never really created anything of long-term value. He's no Warren Buffet or Bill Gates.

> He has never really created anything of long-term value

if the question is 'value' vs 'dollars'. Netscape was the enabler to the creation of trillions of dollars. That's value. He saw the opportunity and created it.

I don't think he needs to be an innovator to be a VC. He needs to be smart and recognize opportunities when they come to him. He's shown a knack for that.

Re: The Problem With Marc Andreessen

#48

Post by smacktoward »

dredmorbius wrote: post #37
smacktoward wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we want to really get pedantic, Mosaic was a "first" -- the first WWW browser to support embedding inline images in Web pages. Previous browsers were text-only; you could post images, but they could only be linked to, not displayed directly inside a page. That made the WWW too similar to Gopher ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29 ) to really break out in popularity. Mosaic's support for inline gra…

The modifier you're looking for is "first graphical WWW browser".

Not really; that would include any WWW browser with a GUI interface (like the original WorldWideWeb on NeXTSTEP).

Re: The Problem With Marc Andreessen

#49

Post by smacktoward »

mattmanser wrote: post #41
srconstantin wrote: post #19

You don't see something...Ponzi-scheme-ish about the industry? I may not be especially familiar with this, but it sounds like: 1. Man makes short-lived company that makes him rich quickly. 2. Man makes money investing in other short-lived companies that make their founders rich quickly. 3. Successful founders grow up to make money investing in still other short-lived companies. Maybe I'm totally misinterpreting this,…

Because there's the occasional hit to pay for all the ponzi schemes. So it ends up being not ponzi because it really does generate cash. I have no idea if Marc actually has done anything at all with his life after mosaic apart from make a lot of terrible companies that sold well. The article seems to imply he's a total fraud. But I'll tell you who has. Microsoft, Google, AOL, Yahoo, etc. They all made lots of money a…

> I think mainly so that no-one can accidentally get bigger than them and take them out.

You're underestimating the "made man" effect. Once you have a really enormous hit, you become a Made Man; someone will always be willing to throw some money at you for future worthless businesses you found, because the people with the money know you and want to stay on your good side on the off chance lightning strikes a second time later on. So they're willing to throw some money away to keep you happy. (And not just you -- it lets them do a solid for the people who invested in your company, too, by letting them walk away without taking a loss. Why do that? Because the investors are usually also Made Men.)

It's not just Andreessen who illustrates this. Look at Google's recent acquisition of Milk:

http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/20/technology/startups/Google-D...

Milk only ever shipped one product, Oink, which was a total flop. But Google spent a reported $15-30 million dollars to acquire them.

Why?

Because Milk was founded by Kevin Rose, and Rose's hit with Digg made him a Made Man; and it had gotten ~$1.5 million in angel funding from a veritable Who's Who of other Made Men (see http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/26/milk-completes-1-5-million-...).

If you had the same company, with the same team and track record, and subtracted Kevin Rose and the plugged-in investors from it -- the same company, just staffed in some podunk Midwestern town and funded by no-name investors -- I doubt Google would have spent a plugged nickel to buy it. But Milk was very plugged in, so Google bailed them out.

In other words, it's classic logrolling (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logrolling). You bail me out when my venture tanks, and I'll bail you out when yours does. It's a pretty sweet deal. But it's a deal that's only available to Made Men.

Re: The Problem With Marc Andreessen

#50

Post by andrewljohnson »

andrewfelix wrote: post #44

I think the problem is with publications like Wired and Fast Company. They tend to gush and over exaggerate the achievements of their subjects while glossing over real problems. Everything is 'world changing', 'revolutionary' and 'disruptive'. Fast Company is the worst offender. They rarely critically analyse anything.

It's interesting to me how tangential comments tend to rise to the top so much on HN.

Your opinion is fair and all, and I'll believe you follow those publications and have a basis for making the claim. But you could have easily written this comment without having read a word of the article - is that really the best comment for the top of the page?

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