Marc Andreessen Says Now's the Time to Build Companies Like It's 1999
allthingsd.com
allthingsd.com
Here is the guy that invented modern day browsers, and modern day SaaS services/companies, and is revolutionizing VC investing. It's like he can't do anything 'normally'.
I love it.
We need more people like that, in the world, willing to shake things up.
Either way, I will be one of those heeding his advice about trying to build awesome internet companies - because he is dead on the money.
Imagine, at the height of the automobile revolution if someone came to you and showed you an 'easy' way to build solid, quality cars in your garage and mass manufacture them for free/cheap and distribute them and sell them on the cheap. Effectively taking advantage of economies of scale without having to pay for the scale.
I can't think of any other industry/revolution/time in history when people could do (from a company building perspective) what we can today with the addressable market size we have access to, with such low distribution costs.
The same thing applies to creating content and media.
How can I not take his advice?
For example, you might have a good idea in some interesting field that doesn't happen to particularly involve the Internet.
At the moment it just seems like everyone arriving in California with a tent and a picaxe because they heard they'll get rich. Overly romantic maybe but I prefer the other way round with the chicken and egg.
Also, that doesn't mean that everybody needs to build the largest companies they can. But, it does mean that everybody that wants to - can.
If you have the ability to, you probably should at least try.
What's the worst that can happen? Even if you go for broke and end up being broke, given that you were the type to go for broke, it's highly likely that you will be very employable.
I do hope you're not mistaking the incredible location-agnostic quality of the internet with the incredible location-dependent quality of human relationships.
Don't take real people for granted. IMHO you hugely multiply your chances if you surround yourself with people in the same physical space and can talk, work, play, and drink together. In my experience, the great ideas come when you are away from your computers.
There are a lot of places this can happen—SF, Boston, New York, and more. But I highly encourage you to make physical connections as well as digital ones.
I so hope he means OUYA!
Generally speaking though, wasn't the Web 2.0 era the one where people dusted themselves down, said 1999 was "too early" and did things right? Andreessen's optimism is infectious, but it doesn't feel like this article says much that's new.
It's just that it's not going to happen.
Let alone survive in the long term.
Let alone build a sustainable software ecosystem.
Ultimately I predict a spectacular failure, but I would love to be wrong on this.
Here is hoping you're correct.
Every week, the editorial has a message that fits the latest data.
Every week, the conclusion is that NOW is the time to buy real estate.
If the market is strong, get in before it is too late. If the market is weak, good time to be a buyer. If the market is very weak, take advantage of those distressed sellers.
It really is amusing. It's more blatant than most self-interested publishing, but so much of what we read follows the same script in more subtle ways.
Used copies start at a penny.
A lot of people are still ordering physical products online for the first time. A lot of offices paying for a webapp for the first time. In a lot of senses 2012 is what 1999 expected 2002 to be.
If you grab a list of 100 failed 1999 companies, you have 100 things that people thought were going to be big in 2002. Worth exploring if you're looking for ideas.
The industry movers and shakers (marketeers) will be sure to tell us what the next word is shortly.
The aftermath is much worse than the event.
That would be more accurate advice in the present climate. imo.
It's 2012 now, lets not go there.
Though I do like the old time issue cover with the whole V Chip thing, oh wait we have that covered as well this time around as well. Guess he may be right, but it's only because computers has become more idiot friendly and mobiles going for a compressed birth life period going from early png like games to full media ones in a shorter time than desktops did and converging and bluring the lines.
Only way to build a company is to gamble and do it quickly or slowly and do it organicly. Both have there plus points and negatives. Only people who realy gain from a massive influx of new companies are those that finance them. But nothing in the article stands out that could make a bullet point out of IMHO.
Netscape/Loudscloud/Opsware ended their lives as pity acquisitions, and Ning never did get off the ground.
Hopefully this venture fund works out and doesn't blow up in 2016 or so.
But he is right on the money with this though:
> From there he pivoted to an argument that the consumer electronics industry is coming back to the U.S. Yes, it’s true, he says, that products like iPhones and tablets get assembled in China, but they often include components made in the U.S. and run software that more often than not was designed in the U.S. “You have to ask where the profits go, and they really go to the U.S. The assembly part is really an arbitrage of labor and transport costs.”
The only reason we make stuff in China is because of the cheap labor (yes really). Robotics and more scalable production designs (you know things that don't require people to touch the production line) will destroy this advantage. Transporting goods thousands of kilometres from production to consumption is just insanely wasteful.
The ONLY thing that will stop China eating the USs lunch will be if its political class decide its merchant class are getting too powerful (as happened in 1425, when owning a ship with more than one mast was made a capital crime).
Netscape was the trigger for a great deal of what you see around you on the Internet today. Obviously, that doesn't mean that if they didn't exist - no one would've done it.
But my point is this: for the first guy to IPO into what started the craze - he didn't get out with too much.
Indeed, if you were to just look at Broadcast.com, which sold for ~$5 billion at the height of the dot com boom, Mark Cuban pulled ~$2 billion for something I think was quietly killed shortly thereafter (i.e. no real impact).
About the last paragraph he certainly means the Ouya, either that or Gabe showed him an actual SteamBox.