What Marc Andreessen said to Quartz that made us sit up and listen
qz.com
qz.com
He's got no idea what middle class means.
He's throwing out the usual conservative talking points about deregulation. (How'd that work for the banking system? In, say, 1929, 1989, 2007? Electricity in CA? The environment before 1970?)
He's of course in favor of manipulating IPO prices, because that's where he makes money, after all.
He's completely delusional about AirBnB.
And he's just a plain lunatic when he says he'd take eye cancer to have Glass.
It certainly makes you sit up and listen. And then shake your head sadly that you wasted time on the article.
Those aren't Youtube's bits coming to me over the wire though, they are mine. I paid for them, both in money to the telco for my connection through them, and to Youtube with my attention to their ads.
Granted, Andreesen was talking about mobile where pricing is N gigs/month, but even that structure might not capture true cost. It also depends when the user uses that bandwidth. During peak hours, capacity is short and end-user Quality of Service might get degraded to accommodate. Rather than complicating end-user pricing with these issues (like charging $Y for X bits at ZZ:ZZ PM), it might make sense to charge the content providers.
Netflix, for instance, during peak hours, accounts for 32.7% of all internet traffic: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/netflix-uses-32-....
Who knows what the best solution is. Maybe it's charging content providers, maybe end-users. The point is that it's not a good idea to have the government set a one-size-fits-all solution.
Why are capitalists so sensitive that criticism always registers as "anti?" Psychologists have a lot to say about absolutist thinking, calling it "either/or," "black/white," "polarized," "binary," "catastrophizing," and similar. My illustration in terms of pay-TV should have been enough of a clue of the distinction I'm making, and that that distinction was not concerned with eliminating an entire ideology.
Everyone pays for transit and it is a major cost for any website operator other than something nearly pure text like hacker-news. Even the Tier 1 networks pay each-other transit fees based on ongoing negotiation.
It seems it's very difficult to maintain awareness of where your knowledge is accurate and where it isn't the more success you accumulate as a more passive desiccation maker than in the trenches problem solver.
I'm disappointed, I always liked that guy.
I suspect that either Ghostery or AdBlock Plus is nuking it. After reading the comments here I guess I won't bother disabling them to read the article.
Cheaper labor? How about a more effective labor force? Ugh.
This. A small percentage of people that make it big can duplicate that success. I've only met one such person in my life and he was the most dangerous business person I ever knew. Dangerous because he walked that line between legal/illegal and ethical/unethical, much to his profit. I realized after meeting him that I could never be him. I just couldn't make some of those decisions, because I wouldn't be able to live with myself.
I'm not saying all serially successful people are like this. It's one data point. I just think many successful people are in the right place at the right time, and many of the other successful people work the system in a way that most of us would find distasteful. Yes, I'm sure there are a small percentage of serially successful people that do it because they have the right stuff and demand our respect and admiration. I just haven't met any of them yet.
And Andreesen is one of them. He's one of the few entrepreneurs who has created two billion dollar companies, and now is running one of the most highly regarded venture capital operations.
He's a mile a minute, super smart, and his accomplishments aren't so surprising after watching him speak:
This is a highly rosy take on history.
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-218360.html
HP today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to purchase Opsware Inc. (Nasdaq: OPSW), a market-leading data center automation software company, through a cash tender offer for $14.25 per share, or an enterprise value (net of existing cash and debt) of approximately $1.6 billion on a fully diluted basis.
http://bhorowitz.com/2010/03/17/the-case-for-the-fat-startup...
You are 100% correct (from my years of business interactions) about this.
There are people that I have observed in business who have no problem making promises and booking more business then they know they can deliver in order to make quota or get deposits etc. Much of this play directly into someone's success. Whether they can "sleep at night" given the decisions that they make. Nobody is 100% honest or 100% a thief. Some people are better at rationalizing their actions then others. Different upbringing different hard knocks. Or just a thief perhaps. Where someone falls on that line definitely (once again from my many years of observation) can determine the success that follows.
Importantly, much of these stories are never told. People only focus on the end results and success of those people.
Attacking his character doesn't make your false dichotomy any more palatable. Why not have cheaper labor and a more effective labor force?
There was a lot of hard work and intelligence behind his being in the right place at the right time.
Loudcloud was a failure. It morphed into opsware. So he was wrong about loudcloud (timing and otherwise).
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/23/marc-andreessens-lo...
"After many adventures–in which the young company suffered many defeats, "
While I almost always tend to lean in the direction you are taking I will add this one point.
Once somebody is successful as Marc has been they end up moving in different circles then the rest of us do. As a result they have access to information that people living on Main street doing It work don't have. So they have a different perspective that is sometimes worth listening to.
That said my problem is when people who have achieved something (say a singer or a musician) starts to spout off and be taken seriously about something they know nothing about.
The reason I listen to Marc is that he's among the smartest people in the startup community.
"The reason I listen to Marc is that he's among the smartest people"
That's the reason you listen to Marc.
Certainly you aren't claiming that there are many others (for example the writers or people in the media) that pay attention to him (and broadcast what he says) for the reasons the parent is mentioning.
(On how "smart" people are often wrong, see for example "The Psychology of Rational Thought" by Keith E. Stanovich.)
Regarding Mr. Andreessen, he's just advocating very conservative policies -- esp. less regulations. Less regulation may be desirable for ventures such as AirBnB, but that doesn't mean it's an absolute good. It at least deserves a public discussion and not just affirmations by one of AirBnB's investors...
(Also, "your mistakes make me wince" is not an argument ;-)
I'm sure he's very smart, and I don't disagree with his observations, however the cheaper labor part was offensive. That was basic "fuck you" to everybody of the non-founder class.
And being rich/powerful certainly helps have people care what you have to say.
You are very smart too -- if Viaweb had not succeeded as it had would people pay as much attention to you?
Edit:
In reflection my comment was not in the proper spirit of HN -- it was bitter and that's not needed here. It did get upvoted plenty though...
Note to self: abandon any notion of ever applying to YC.
Or perhaps it was that Andreesen (HN username: pmarca) and his Mosaic collaborators helped make it into the right place with their perceptive, opportunistic actions?
Also, has everyone else at those same places and times since, achieved the same investment results and current vantage point into the whole industry?
Or perhaps instead Andreesen continued to assemble a portfolio of more hits than misses, and an ever-larger network of quality collaborators?
This piss-on-success/noone-earned-or-knows-anything attitude is toxic and it saddens me that at two hours old it was the top comment on this submission.
I'll value the opinions coming from Andreesen's 20-year track record, and deep involvement in some of the signature businesses of our times, over those of bitter comment-thread potshot-takers. If he says labor costs in the US are a business problem, it's got a lot more credibility than a disapproving 'ugh' grunt from someone who offers negative judgement without any argument/support.
As for the article, many of these seem like realistic perspectives, even if they discomfort the typical listener.
> echo chamber in the tech community
Do you really believe that the "echo chamber" happens because people lie about their beliefs to fit in? I couldn't disagree more. I'm fairly certain the "echo chamber" happens because we share backgrounds, information sources, and inferential technique, leading us to share conclusions as well. It would be fair to call our community "too homogenous/narrow" but it's equally incorrect and insulting to imply that the majority viewpoint persists through popularity alone.
As for the article, you're correct that his perspectives are "realistic" in that I believe they are shared by many people in the investor class. However, they're completely self-serving and unaligned with the common good. In that sense I see his opinions as roughly morally equivalent to the cries of "redistribute all the wealth to eliminate poverty" that occur in different contexts.
For instance, he predicts that we will "run out of capacity" for our data hungry apps. SO BUILD MORE CAPACITY, DAMMIT. If that means redistributing spectrum, so be it. Match supply with demand. That's what markets are supposed to do. I'm sure investors would love to ride the bubble formed by artificially restricted supply but they do so at the cost of everyone else. It's sickening to see him pretend that he's forwarding a common interest by opposing net neutrality.
Ditto for his comments on the workforce.
None of his other opinions (1,5,6,7,8) seem terribly controversial so I've ignored them.
I don't believe most people actively lie about their opinions, though I'm sure it happens and probably more often than one would want to admit. I think it's more just a classic case of groupthink; people just adopt the opinion of the group for the social benefit, more or less subconsciously.
More important than simply having an unpopular opinion is the willingness to express it when asked, even if it's not going to result in praise or accolades from the group's (explicitly or implicity) chosen "thought leaders". Such a thing encourages independent analysis and challenges the authority of said "thought leaders", which is healthy in most contexts.
It's especially important to do this in tech; since many of us seem to lack basic social skills, the cost of expressing a thing at odds with the group's position are disproportionately severe, and combined with the technical perspective of most in the field, groupthink pervades our sector particularly deeply, and the consequences of opposing one's technical religious positions are particularly harsh.
While it's pretty obvious that Andreesen's opinions are informed by his personal perspective as a wealthy dude, I don't think we should allow that to unfairly bias our reception. We're obviously not going to volunteer to have the phone company charge us $500/mo, but it doesn't mean that he's wrong about the basic principle of metered data or the availability of supply.
While you see an "artificially restricted supply", Andreesen sees "artificially curtailed demand" (as far as supply<->demand applies to pricing) by heavy dependence on cheap offshored labor and the political impossibility of bringing that labor front and center (i.e., on-shoring it). I think this is a viewpoint worthy of consideration even if we don't like its implications, which are basically that things should cost much more than they do now.
Relevant:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/your-money/a-warning-for-a...
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-27/airbnb-to-ta...
As soon as the hotel industry perceives AirBnB as a legitimate threat --we're getting there in NYC-- it will take action/lobbying to the next level, and it won't be pretty. For starters, they could ask the IRS to demand a full DB dump of all hosts to tax their (mostly illegitimate) income, which I suspect is not reported as such. The pool of available inventory will dry up in no time.
That said, I am wondering if he means that they can pivot and buy their own buildings to become full-fledged hoteliers.
Not putting flowers on their grave, but sincerely doubting their prospects in the (US) hospitality-space, especially in metro areas. Like I mentioned above, he may be referring to possible pivots based on fan-base, data collected etc., e.g. actually running their own unique hotels, a matching solution for people who are looking for buyers (stay before you buy), roommate finders (rentals over 30 days, which are mostly legal), lead generation (rentals and sales) etc. etc. etc.
For the record: I think he's a smart guy, and I agree with most of his other points (1,4,5,6,8), question others (2,3 & 7).
Also agree with another poster that he was a lucky guy (I've actually used Spyglass and Netscape 1.0, get off my lawn, haha)
Don't get me wrong, I do think he is a genius and there is some gold in this article - but also some ridiculous statements.
And yet, according to the conservative Heritage Foundation's ranking on ease of doing business the U.S. as a whole came in a respectable 10th, and I'm going to make a wild guess that the places he is talking about in that quote aren't many if any of the countries ahead of the U.S.
Also, what's with that qz.com headline? Why, exactly, do we care about the gonzo-reaction of a tech blogger (the "sit up and listen" bit.) It's just a fluffy throw-away expression and comes across as the reddit equivalent of "shit just got real." I understand: they're summarizing 8 insights from Andressen, but strictly speaking, the headline is about the reporter instead of Andressen. How about: "Andressen predicts massive changes to housing, mobile, and the middle class." I don't write headlines, but at least this refers to the material in the article.
As for the content: on the one hand, I appreciate a bulleted list for its quick readability, but the headline sounds to me like an excuse to make a list instead of a narrative...
For me personally I think it sits b/c my work proxy has an ad blocker.
There's also the idea that the middle class is the high-school degreed people who make "decent" money, perhaps by being in the trades (i.e., plumber) or working in a factory. Edit: this idea is not unique, I've heard it in a variety of places.
These two ideas don't really connect too well (although business-minded tradespeople can grow their business to be fairly lucrative).
I have no particular comment regarding Marc's statements, but I wanted to point out the varying definitions.
News at 11.