Recode podcast
Andreessen talks with Swisher on Re/code Decode about bubbles, politics and parenting.
When I first came out here [Silicon Valley] I thought that I had missed all the excitement. I thought that the PC had happened and I thought that was it, and I thought that we were just going to play cleanup after the PC. And then the internet supernova happened and this new universe has opened up. For me that was a big shock. The opportunities for this industry are just so much bigger than they used to be. We see kids coming here in their early 20s and every now and then they’ll say ‘Boy, I wish I was here in the old days when everything was happening’ and I think they’re all going to be sitting in these chairs 20 years from now, saying the same thing, ‘Oh it was so crude an primitive back then’.
New Yorker profile
Andreessen and Andreessen Horowitz are profiled in an article in the New Yorker titled, Tomorrow’s Advance Man.
Entrepreneurs want to raise money from us, so the natural thing when we say ‘What if you did this?’ is to tell us what we want to hear. But we don’t want to hear what we want to hear. It’s a delight when they look at you with contempt—You idiot—and then walk you through the idea maze and explain why your idea won’t work. At the same time, we’re not funding Mother Teresa. We’re funding imperial, will-to-power people who want to crush their competition. Companies can only have a big impact on the world if they get big…Deal flow is everything. If you’re in a second-tier firm, you never get a chance at that great company.
Breakthrough ideas look crazy, nuts. It’s hard to think this way—I see it in other people’s body language, and I can feel it in my own, where I sometimes feel like I don’t even care if it’s going to work, I can’t take more change. O.K., Google, O.K., Twitter—but Airbnb? People staying in each other’s houses without there being a lot of axe murders?
Chris Dixon argues that we’re in the magical-products business—that we fool ourselves into thinking we’re building companies, but it doesn’t matter if we don’t have the magical products. Over twenty years, our returns are going to come down to two or three or four investments, and the rest of this [gestures at the building and staff] is the cost of getting the chance at those investments. There’s a sense in which all of this is math—you just don’t know which Tuesday Mark Zuckerberg is going to walk in.
How to Start a Startup 9: How to Raise Money
Altman interviews Andreesen, Conway and Parker in the ninth How to Start a Startup lecture, How to Raise Money, at Stanford University.
New York interview
In a wide-ranging and detailed interview with New York magazine, Andreessen talks about Silcon Valley culture, discrimination, his favorite TV shoe (Deadwood), and the ideal of meritocracy:
I believe the ideal is compromised by two things right now: One is educational skills development, and the other is access. This is the critique that I think is actually the most interesting, which is, yeah, the meritocracy works if you know the right people, if you have access to the networks. How do venture capitalists make investment decisions? Well, we get referrals based on people we already know. Well, what if you’re somebody who doesn’t already know anybody, right? What if you don’t know the recruiter at Facebook so you can’t get the job? What if you don’t know the venture capitalist so you can’t raise funding? We think access is broadening out the network so that everybody who could contribute can get access to the network. And that’s the one that we’re working on.
Not sorry for Tweetstorms
Andreessen says that he wants to remain inclusive on Twitter, but doesn’t apologize for his unique use of the platform.
I am a true believer…I think we have a fantastic story to tell out here. I don’t think the negative story should go unchallenged.
Startup School
Graham interviews Andreessen about Netscape and how the tech industry has changed. Andreessen:
All of us who were lucky enough to be involved back then were completely unaware of what was going to happen