The Mind of Marc Andreessen
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
To be fair, the author tries to ask some adversarial questions towards the end of the article, but for example Alex Payne's criticism (link: https://al3x.net/2014/06/17/dear-marc-andreessen.html) is dismissed with a casual ad-hominem attack.
The vision Marc presents for blue-collar workers (work a lot and be poor or work when you feel like it and be very poor) is hardly enticing. The future he is envisioning is one of extreme inequality, with a handful of people controlling most of the advanced technology that keeps the world running. And a16z clearly want to be among these people.
This really isn't so. The whole article is peppered with jabs at Andreesen's personality, skill-set, track record, self-awareness and skull shape. And when the writer reports Andreesen blowing off Payne as “a self-hating software engineer”, he didn't do that to make Andreesen look good or sound persuasive.
Seriously? I thought the article portrayed Andreessen as an egotistical blowhard and kind of an all-around prick, with questionable skills as a visionary and investor; it certainly didn't strike me as an encomium.
Where does he present that? I don't think he did.
I really don't think that the article is a PR piece. It has to be one of the most substantial articles about VC investing to have appeared in the non-technical press for years, and it's a complex profile. It may not be accurate (I wouldn't know), but is far from all sugar, and dismissing it with an offhand swipe seems unproductive.
Andreesen's candid comments about Gurley/Benchmark are hilarious. The whole bit about his rural upbringing influencing his full-on embrace of a tech-utopian future is something I could fully understand; whenever I hate our industry, I go spend some time in a beautiful rural environment until I remember why it's so frustrating.
I'm glad the writer explained the influence of Mike Ovitz and the CAA culture on how A16Z operates. One of my closest friends was an agent at CAA in the late 90s, and we used to spend a lot of time talking about their operating strategy. CAA took over the entertainment agent world by being more resourceful, cultured, helpful and -- most importantly -- way more professional than everyone else (I was told a great story of how Donald Trump, while searching for an agent during the time of The Apprentice, took a meeting with CAA; upon entering and finding a conference table of perfectly suited, perfectly punctual agents waiting for him, he exclaimed, "you're all hired!"). I'd be interested to compare an old-school CAA client pitch with a modern A16Z startup meeting. I also think the rest of the Valley and its VCs don't understand the CAA way, and why it is so superior to their golf-club way of doing business.
The behind-the-scenes look at Instacart's latest funding round was really interesting. Understanding the psychology that leads to massive funding rounds -- and how you're either getting bid up by each partner in the after-pitch conversation, or bid down until they don't want to participate -- is something that doesn't get much public visibility. Again, such an honest look at the inner workings of Andreesen and his colleagues.
Andreesen is, quite clearly, at the top of the game in the VC business. His success is well deserved. I am sure everyone in SV will be talking about this article this week. This article is of great service to everyone who isn't deep in the SV game, but who wants to understand how it works (or should work).
Shouldn't his returns have some bearing?
This talent is what makes A16Z so amazing - they are so different from the average bean-counting VCs, whose sets of tools are focused on financial exits and powerplays inside boards.
It clocked in at 13,500 words, and I couldn't tear myself away from it. I don't think I was tempted, for even a second to divert my attention.
Highly recommended.
I'd love for the fund data to be available!
edit: Ah, it was published as an ebook as well this January: http://a16z.com/2015/01/09/pmarca-blog-ebook/
His current blog: http://blog.pmarca.com/archive/
Uh, is there a more robust/cogent thought that explains this?
https://www.google.com/search?q=lbj%20substantial%20organ&oq...
your assumption is that A16Z would own 100% of those 2 next Facebooks... which I don't think I need to point out how wrong that is (sorry, I just did)
let's assume something more realistic, like a16z getting 20% of each 200B company that appears - they would need to invest on the next TEN Facebooks (at an earliesh stage), and that seems a bit harder. and let's not forget that most "unicorns" don't even go past the 10B when IPOing, so in reality, they need a lot more than 10 FBs...
Sheds some light on http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part9.html
http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/8.08/loudcloud_pr.htm...
For those who don't know the outcome of Loudcloud, it would eventually sell the managed services business to EDS and rebrand the software portion of the business as Opsware. Opsware would later be acquired by HP. HP would later acquire EDS.
Can somebody help explain how these calculations work according specifically to the article? The numbers make no sense to me if I use the article's explanation of this VC verbal shorthand.
"Ten on thirty" gives a $40M valuation? How? And how does "ten on fifteen" halve the valuation - according to the article paragraph above, wouldn't that double the valuation by investing $10M for just 15%, instead of 30%-33% equity stake?
EDIT: Thank you for the replies. I appreciate the responses.
Ten on Fifteen/Twenty means $10M invested in a company currently being valued at $15M/$20M, so the valuation after the investment would be $25M/$30M.
10/30 gives 33%(1/3rd) at a valuation of 40 million
10 + 30 = 40
So $40 million valuation for $10 million investment which gives them 33% of the company.
10/15 would imply 33%(1/3) at a valuation of 10+15 = 25
$25 million dollars is close to $20 million which is half of the original $40 million.
Marc's 6/12 implies 6 million investment at 18 million valuation for 50% of the company.
Better yet, $15 million is precisely half of $30 million. And that number is the pre-money (as in, the actual, now) valuation for the company.
So suggesting that a deal is "10 on 15" rather than "10 on 30" is suggesting that the company is precisely half the valuation of the first suggestion.
The company is worth $30 million or $40 million depending on whether or not the investors put in the $10 million yet or not. Hope that helps.
'Ten on fifteen' would mean $10 million invested at $15 million pre-money, giving $25 million post and the investors 40% of the company. And so on.
Investors almost always speak on a pre-money basis: thus, $15 million pre-money is half of $30 million pre-money.
I'd be curious to hear what he thinks of it!
I also wish the article touched on Andreessen's thoughts about publicly financed science. Basic scientific research is something that the government puts a lot of money in too, and that should be robustly defended.
even as you philosophize about ushering in a new age of democracy, you also have to make money for your L.P.s. And, while the ideal startup advances both goals, most, in truth, advance neither. The V.C. Bryce Roberts told me, “It’s an ego game, where you want to believe you’re changing the world. But how can you write a check to Fab and believe that giving people discounted tchotchkes is changing the world?”
The article then changes topic and doesn't really discuss that further though.
I don't feel that the article succumbed too much to that rhetoric, unlike most media both closer and further from the tech industry. But in an article with supposedly real talk from VCs, Bryce's is the realest.
Should've also pushed harder against the "push a button to work" Uber-utopia.
What is this toilet???
I'll take "stupid" and "badly designed" for $1.
There is something bothering me in this article and the "startup culture" in general. Everyone thinks they make the world a better place. Silicon Valley's (the TV series) satire is spot on this. No matter what half brain dead app someone creates, it's supposed to revolutionize and "disrupt" some meaningless aspect of our lives. Of course technology helps the man overcome many problems, be smarter, healthier etc. But it is no panacea. We have the technology of the 21st century with the education of 1500 as to what to do with it. So everyone is making apps for cats or creates a temporary and indivudual-based solution for "problems" that we shouldn't have all along (creating additional problems). This is a huge waste of potential. If you really want to make the world a better place focus on the things that matter. At the very least be honest with what you are doing. Someone wants to make money and that's fine. The probability that the the world will benefit from it is most of the times incidental.
In some weird way am glad this was on HN.
</rant>
"So he later saw Amazon as a heroic disseminator of knowledge and progress. “Screw the independent bookstores,” he told me. “There weren’t any near where I grew up. There were only ones in college towns. The rest of us could go pound sand.”"
I understand his point, but it seems more like 'I didn't get what I want so fuck you all' rather than something actually productive.
If ever there was a good reason to favor Amazon, this seems like one.
That is the point that is often lost. I think this everytime I see someone who actually went to school and has a degree in something "serious" (with job security) throwing that away to do a startup idea. Shark Tank even had this. Robert Herjavec egging on a "board certified dental surgeon" to leave his career (was on "Beyond the Tank") to be able to sell (what started out as) Christmas sweaters. [1] The Dentist making a point that it was a tough decision because he had spent 10 difficult years going through Dental school and other training.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/tipsy-elves-shark-tank-succes...
Plus, I want greater analysis on his psychology. I am able to gather his analysis on investments that first he draws the big ideal picture of the future and then backs anyone going towards that future.
There are companies every day trying to genuinely make the world a better place, like the healthcare IT one that I work for, trying to open up a Steam-like platform to do signal processing in hospitals. Or the not one but two charity fundraising startups bootstrapping in my city. Or the test-grading automation startup in Dallas.
And yet, because these companies aren't within walking distance of the Valley VCs, and because they are sometimes tackling industry problems that take more than a year to close a basic deal on (seriously, fuck hospital invoicing and billing), they have enormous trouble getting out of the valley of startup death because no funding available that permits easy growth. And because the local VCs in these cities are looking for easy deals, they just fly over for their day trips to the coast, and ignore what's in their own backyards.
So, for fuck's sake, let's not complain about the developers who are trying to eke out a living--let's instead take a long, hard look at the market and society that rewards them, and understand that that is the root of the problem.
EDIT: Minor clarification in paragraph two.
You are right. It's the society and the market that rewards such situations. The ugly sweater startup makes millions but the charity fundraising you mentioned will probably fail. Because one would prefer to look out of fashionly grandma-like cool (?) than help someone else. It's a problem of education in the broad sense, and I don't know, overcoming our natural impulses for egoism, greed and fear ? Sound like clichés but I belive they are at the heart of our problems as a whole.
You make it sound like developers are not one of the privileged classes in this world, that they can't make money easier and accumulate more of it with less physical, psychological and emotional degradation than the vast majority of the world. That they might "only" be in the top 10% instead of the top 1% does not make it less true.
No one in the top 10% has any business complaining except about the condition of the bottom 50%, and then they should be doing something about it, as 7_7 suggests.
I think you're incorrect about this. I think you aren't counting the mental and emotional toll of working on projects that get arbitrarily shitcanned, or working 120-hour weeks because you think you'll be the king of the roach bucket because your investors said so, or the constant dehumanization of "You are programmer beep boop why can't you just make this business concept work?".
As far as physical hardship, look at all the folks with carpal tunnel syndrome, obesity, diabetes, bad backs from slouching, or any of the other issues endemic to white-collar long-hour development work.
And for all that, we're still probably just going to be me, complaining about the working conditions and things that suck, and you, dismissing those same issues because some Kazak iron worker works in a dangerous foundry. This is stupid.
No one in the top 10% has any business complaining except about the condition of the bottom 50%,
See, this line of thinking expands easily: "Nobody in the top 30% has any valid complaint, except..."
Suffering is suffering. Handcuffs are handcuffs, golden or not. Abuse is abuse, whether it is from a shitty founder or a shitty secret policeman. Being underpaid is being underpaid, whether it's by one dollar or a hundred thousand.
Your line only suits the super-rich, and is a great appeal to guilt to help people ignore how much they're getting shafted.
EDIT:
So, again, not a single act of self-abasement or renouncing of privilege is going to do anything to help those truly in need. Face facts: there's not enough room in the clubhouse for everyone, and we don't help ourselves by voluntarily standing outside, unless it's with torches.
These aren't problems inherent in the profession. Not every white-collar worker is fat with diabetes. Plenty of developers find time to work out and take care of themselves, and being part of this 10% affords them the luxury to get a gym membership or buy healthy food.
This is very different than someone who puts in grueling hours of manual labor or makes a wage that puts them below the poverty line, forcing them to eat cheap, unhealthy food every day.
Or, you know, where the folks are so buried in loan and student debt that are effectively below the poverty line, but they just get to claim a nicer cell. They're no more free than your blue-collar folks.
If all you do is code and sleep, then your notion of 'stress' is entirely tied up in what it's like to be sitting in front of the monitor.
While that can truly be very stressful, it always seems like the people who don't get as upset at work run, or hike, or swim, or are musicians on the weekend.
For a long time I thought that meant "If you're put together well enough you have energy left on the weekends." but eventually I decided if I waited until I was put together then I'd be infirm at an early age, so I just started doing things.
Now I think it's the people who have extracurricular activities that are more put together than the other way around. They have a more diverse definition for the word 'adversity' and things don't bother them as much.
If this is true, and given the piece is in the New Yorker, it definitely speaks volumes about how much money AH spends on PR.
Right now? Apps are a decent way to gather resources.
When I was asked to make this address I wondered what I had to say to you boys who are graduating. And I think I have one thing to say. If you wish to be useful, never take a course that will silence you. Refuse to learn anything that implies collusion, whether it be a clerkship or a curacy, a legal fee or a post in a university. Retain the power of speech no matter what other power you may lose. If you can take this course, and in so far as you take it, you will bless this country. In so far as you depart from this course, you become dampers, mutes, and hooded executioners.
As a practical matter, a mere failure to speak out upon occassions where no statement is asked or expect from you, and when the utterance of an uncalled for suspicion is odious, will often hold you to a concurrence in palpable iniquity. Try to raise a voice that will be heard from here to Albany and watch what comes forward to shut off the sound. It is not a German sergeant, nor a Russian officer of the precinct. It is a note from a friend of your father's, offering you a place at his office. This is your warning from the secret police. Why, if you any of young gentleman have a mind to make himself heard a mile off, you must make a bonfire of your reputations, and a close enemy of most men who would wish you well.
I have seen ten years of young men who rush out into the world with their messages, and when they find how deaf the world is, they think they must save their strength and wait. They believe that after a while they will be able to get up on some little eminence from which they can make themselves heard. "In a few years," reasons one of them, "I shall have gained a standing, and then I shall use my powers for good." Next year comes and with it a strange discovery. The man has lost his horizon of thought, his ambition has evaporated; he has nothing to say. I give you this one rule of conduct. Do what you will, but speak out always. Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared, be in doubt, but don't be gagged. The time of trial is always. Now is the appointed time.
John J. Chapman,
Commencement Address to the Graduating Class of Hobart College, 1900
It seems to be that the world is already overfull with the principled, loud, and ineffectual. I see many people who adhere to Mr. Chapman's advice, and all their efforts amount to naught.
Take a stand on something you see as wrong, and walk the talk. Today, not tomorrow. No excuses.
The world remained unmoved. And I... I gained in wisdom.
Speaking out with integrity and principle has impact to the extent that you have the ability to translate your beliefs into realty. The world has no lack of people with principles and integrity who don't agree with you. They are all also attempting to make impacts. The ones most likely to be successful and get the impact they want are the ones with the resources to back it up.
Remember - people who disagree with you are often loud, brave, and principled people willing to sacrifice who believe they are doing the right thing.
If I could sacrifice the screaming passions of every marcher in Berkeley, every Black Panther in Oakland, and every OWS camper for another Gates Foundation... I would do so in a heartbeat. Because the result would be dramatically improved lives for a great many people as resources are expended less on principled posturing by people with integrity and more towards actually doing things.
So, friend, let us dispense with the Naming of Names and Taking of Stands. Let us get on with the bit where we actually do things that help people. That is, after all, what matters.
And I the opposite. The Gates Foundation is built on ill-gotten gains, the kind of abuse of power that makes the world the bad place it is. The marchers in Berkeley (my alma mater), the Black Panthers and OWS all had profound impacts on the social conversation and psyche. Would you trade Selma for The Gates Foundation too?
That you felt the world remained unmoved by your earlier efforts hints at the kind of arrogance or desire to play god that the current internet tech world is criticized for. Doing the right thing must be done because it is right, not because you get personal satisfaction or glory (or profit). Doesn't sound like you gained the wisdom that you believe you did. You probably don't get my points about integrity and walking the talk, that those "most people" you refer to aren't actually waling it. Certainly not Bill Gates.
Maybe you'll not get anything I'm saying.
Whatever helps you sleep better at night.
(I had a paragraph here remarking on the differences in accomplishment between OWS and the Gates Foundation as I see them. I have removed it, because it is distinctly unkind.)
Consider, friend, the possibility that I understand every single one of your points. Consider the possibility that I understand your criticisms. Consider that I understand the accusations of arrogance, moral duplicity, corruption. Consider that perhaps I do understand what you mean about integrity and walking the talk.
Consider, then, the possibility that I might understand you, your points, and your positions. And still honestly disagree.
Please. Just consider the mere possibility.
You continue to assume that Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation together (you cannot separate one from the other) have a net impact on the world that is positive and that is greater than OWS.
"Lives saved" is not the only metric, and is not even the best metric. What good is saving a life if that life is consigned to suffering, or worse, effective slavery at the hands of capitalist-fuedalism? Most people who have tasted freedom would rather die fighting than live long as a slave. And even if a good metric, what if the greed and relentlessly accumulating power of the capitalist system that both produced and is produced by Microsoft is the reason Africa, India and the rest of the third world is in the sorry state it is in, and so the underlying reason for the deaths?
Please, can you consider the mere possibility that your assumptions are wrong, and the truth that your arguments are logically fallacious, relying on straw men, circular reasoning and begging the question. You have failed to answer any of my specific critiques of your claims, and present opinion as incontrovertible fact.
No. I assert that looking at results delivered to date, the Gates Foundation has delivered more than OWS has. If history and logic cannot be used as meaningful predictors, then this whole discussion is pointless.
> Please, can you consider the mere possibility that your assumptions are wrong, and the truth that your arguments are logically fallacious, relying on straw men, circular reasoning and begging the question. You have failed to answer any of my specific critiques of your claims, and present opinion as incontrovertible fact.
I have. In fact, I lived as you urge. You dismiss this, as it did not produce the results you anticipate, so therefore I clearly did it wrong.
A clear pattern has emerged. I have seen this sort of reasoning before. I wish you good luck with your new religious avocation. Good day.
The problem is this is such a useless metric and so vague that they are probably right - for some subset of users.
If whatever you are building makes 1 or 2 people's lives easier or a process more efficient, or someone a little happier by using it, then you can say that you legitimately made their world a better place.
Problem is the "making the world a better place" mantra brings to mind things like vaccines and the dishwasher etc... not a mobile library for Haskell which makes 20,000 software developer's lives slightly easier. So I am against the phrase in general because it signals a global reach, while realizing it might be true locally.
I wish Gates would get into the SV fray and throw some money around to these problems.
My last startup was (yet another) attempt to solve unemployment. As we got closer to the problem with our market research, built an initial product, and tried to sell it, we realized that the field is...well, let's call it "fractally fucked up". The job/employment market is a mess of millions of different actors, all of whom are doing the wrong thing because their incentives are perverse, they lack full information, and they wouldn't act on that information because they don't trust it even if they had it. You can't solve this problem by throwing around money, because you have to change behavior and you only change behavior through long-term, deliberate attention on the part of all of the individual actors.
I'd posit that all of the "ugly problems" of this world - unemployment, education, inequality, health care, human rights - result from similar fractally fucked-up systems. It is far, far easier to solve the problem for yourself and a small number of other people than to solve it for everyone. In some cases - like inequality or power dynamics - it's not possible to solve it for everyone, because the definition of the problem changes as you make progress.
I feel like if everyone would absorb your point, it would cut out the most toxic kinds of negative dismissal that we see in these threads—the kind that assume X would be easy, if only Y weren't so stupid or greedy.
Andreessen makes bets on technology x people. The tech has to be provocative and world-changing, but more importantly, the people behind the tech have to be thoughtful, bold and unique in their worldview.
Interesting points:
- A16z makes bets on consumer tech in later rounds (more risk earlier, increased cost later worth the more sure bet) - i.e. Oculus
- Invests in enterprise tech earlier (less risk of a fickle consumer / competition)
- What's better than telling investors (or at least a16z) what they want to hear is providing them with insight as to why their assumptions might be wrong and you have better answers (phrased here as "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.")
Read the article, you won't regret it.
Some of my favorite excerpts:
[1] In 1996, when Horowitz was a Netscape product manager, he wrote a note to Andreessen, accusing him of prematurely revealing the company’s new strategy to a reporter. Andreessen wrote back to say that it would be Horowitz’s fault if the company failed: “Next time do the fucking interview yourself. Fuck you.” Ordinarily, relationship over. “When he feels disrespected, Marc can cut you out of his life like a cancer,” one of Andreessen’s close friends said. “But Ben and Marc fight like cats and dogs, then forget about it.”
[2] A16z led Airbnb’s B round. Soon afterward, the company was battered by headlines about renters who trashed a San Francisco home. It wasn’t axe murders, but, Chesky said, “It was a P.R. nightmare. We had just expanded from being ten people living in a three-bedroom apartment and we had no idea how to be a billion-dollar company. Marc came to our office at midnight and read the letter I’d written to our community about the Airbnb Guarantee, and the two changes he made changed the company forever. I’d said we guarantee five thousand dollars for property damage, and he added a zero, which seemed crazy.” Andreessen also added the proviso that claimants would have to file a police report, which he correctly believed would discourage scam artists. “And he told me to add my personal e-mail address. He gave us permission to be bold.”
[3] A favorite Andreessen response to underlings’ confusion was “There are no stupid questions, only stupid people.” Jim Barksdale, the company’s C.E.O., said, “I’d tell Marc after meetings, ‘You don’t have to tell a dumb sumbitch he’s a dumb sumbitch.’ ” Andreessen told me, “I needed Netscape to work, it had to work—it was my one-way door—so I was absolutely intolerant of anything that got in the way”—meaning, he clarified, “people.” He could never relax: “I am very paranoid. And the down cycle hurt a lot more than the up cycle felt good.”
[4] [...] Peter Thiel suggests, is that Andreessen may not be as suited to making early, counterintuitive investments as he is—a point that Andreessen concedes: “Peter is just smarter than I am, and in a lateral way.” But, Thiel says, Andreessen is well positioned, because of his broad knowledge and flexible mind-set, to respond to incremental changes in an array of fields. And that, he argues, is what the times reward: “While Twitter is a lesser innovation than flying cars, it’s a much more valuable business. We live in a financial age, not a technological age.”
[5] One challenge for Andreessen is whether venture itself has a skills problem. If software is truly eating the world, wouldn’t venture capital be on the menu? The AngelList platform now allows investors to fund startups online. Its co-founder Naval Ravikant said that “future companies will require more two-hundred-thousand-dollar checks and way fewer guys on Sand Hill Road.” Jeff Fagnan, of Atlas Venture, which is the largest investor in AngelList, said, “Software is already squeezing out other intermediaries—travel agents, financial advisers—and, at the end of the day, V.C.s are intermediaries. We’re all just selling cash.”
Andreessen sometimes wonders if Ravikant is onto something. He’s asked Horowitz, “What if we’re the most evolved dinosaur, and Naval is a bird?” Already, more than half the tech companies that reached a billion-dollar valuation in the past decade were based outside Silicon Valley. And as Andreessen himself wrote in 2007, before he became a V.C., “Odds are, nothing your V.C. does, no matter how helpful or well-intentioned, is going to tip the balance between success and failure.”
[6] He acknowledged, though, that his optimism dims once human beings—with their illogic, hidden agendas, and sheer bugginess—enter the equation. “We’re imperfect people pursuing perfect ideas, and there’s tremendous frustration in the gap,” he said. “Writing code, one or two people, that’s the Platonic ideal. But when you want to impact the world you need one hundred people, then one thousand, then ten thousand—and people have all these people issues.” He examined the problem in silence. “A world of just computers wouldn’t work,” he concluded wistfully. “But a world of just people could certainly be improved.”
Of course, again, on average the venture firms have poor ROI:
http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/2012/07/institutional-limit...
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/02/venture-capital-returns.html...
Yes, apparently the Silicon Valley information technology (IT) venture firms are trying to evaluate everything that comes in the door having to do with IT. There's a problem doing this: By analogy, it's like picking dart throwers. Only a tiny fraction of the dart throwers are actually experts, and the rest are amateurs throwing wildly. But, there are so few experts and so many more amateurs that, on average, nearly all the darts in the center of the target come from lucky amateurs and not real experts. So, net, the Silicon Valley is trying to evaluate the huge fraction of amateurs that mostly need just luck.
Much better would be to concentrate on the few real experts who need much less in luck. "Few"? Right, but so is the number of desired successes, and the number of real experts should be sufficient.
Then, with the article, we come to a significant point: The Silicon Valley venture capital (VC) firms just do not know how to plan, do, and evaluate projects from real experts.
Some people do know: The shortest description of project planning is:
Step 1: Pick a good problem.
Step 2: Use IT to get a good solution.
So, sure, in Step 1 want to solve a suitably important problem, one where the first good or a much better solution will be a must have and not just a nice to have for enough people so that the number of people times the average earnings per person is enough to make a real unicorn.
Or, in crude, simple terms, maybe want a must have solution for a big ass problem in a big ass market.
Sure, the ideal situation, although likely not in IT, would be a safe, effective, inexpensive one pill taken once cure for any cancer. Such a project would just "cut right through" (borrowing from the movie Moneyball) all the nonsense about body language, vision to change the world, how to manage 100, 1000, 10,000 people, hard scrabble backgrounds, tone of voice, assertive manner, clothes selections, etc.
And, sure, in Step 2 want to use IT to get the "first good or much better solution", defensible, with barriers to entry, etc.
So, from the article, apparently Silicon Valley VCs don't know how to evaluate projects that follow the two steps above.
Does anyone know how to do such evaluations? Sure:
For Step 1, that the problem being solved is suitably important should, like the example of the cancer pill, be obvious. Right, here get to rule out considering projects such as Fab, PopSugar, Zulily, SnapChat, AirBnb.
So, what's left is Step 2, and evaluating that is mostly just technical.
While apparently Silicon Valley is next to hopeless at evaluating new, powerful technology, our better research universities, NSF, NIH, DARPA, etc. are quite good, thank you.
So, an example of a project with really good technology? Sure:
http://iliketowastemytime.com/sites/default/files/sr71_black...
Sorry, Marc: On my BoD I want -- it's crucial and I insist -- people who can understand my business, including the crucial core, unique IT, and for that, Marc, I want to know what you did in your STEM field Ph.D. program and have done in research since. E.g., I want people like the dissertation advisors in STEM fields in top research universities and problem sponsors at NSF, NIH, DARPA. How many Silicon Valley VCs do you know who qualify? I want people like those who looked at Kelly Johnson's engineering drawings and approved the SR-71; Marc, their batting average is much better than yours or nearly any VC (Chris Sacca may be on the way to being the only exception), and they fund just off pieces of paper.
Marc, from the article your evaluations look like you would have asked Kelly Johnson if his SR-71 could also fly to Mars and refuse to fund him unless he enthusiastically said "Mars? Yes, and to infinity and beyond!" or some such nonsense. Look, Marc, it was Mach 3+, 80,000+ feet, 2000+ miles without refueling, never shot down -- as needed, as planned, as accomplished.
Marc, in simple terms, in IT, you just do not know very well what you are doing; on my BoD, can't use you; your wildly irrational flights of nonsense could sink my company.
Maybe A16Z is doing well, at least in comparison, maybe like a WWII piston powered fighter plane instead of a horse but still not an SR-71.
It remains: Nearly all the US high end IT is for US national security with only meager connection with Silicon Valley VC. Telling point: Nearly no Silicon Valley VC has the background to be a problem sponsor or project reviewer for NSF, NIH, or DARPA.
Microsoft is bootstrapped
Sites like Facebook and Imgur profit off of the value of original content created by third parties in the hopes that most of the value will be squeezed out of it before the creator notices or has a chance to send a DMCA takedown notice.
I increasingly stumble across complaints from artists whose videos will have as few as 150 views on YouTube, while the pirated copies that someone uploaded directly to Facebook (with all of the true creator's information removed) have millions of views.
One person I directly contacted was a woman named Leslie Hall, whose stolen video on Facebook had over 20 million views, which is more than twice as many views as all of her YouTube videos combined. She has been uploading videos to YouTube for nearly a decade in her struggle to make a name for herself, and when she finally got some attention, it was in a corrupted form where no one knew her name or how to find more of her videos (other than the 0.02% of people who bothered to use Google-fu on the lyrics to find the answer). She also lost tens of thousands of dollars in YouTube Partnership ad revenue, de facto stolen from her by Facebook. The comments section was full of people who loved her, but they all had no idea who she was. Since Facebook refuses to do the ethical bare minimum and swap freebooted viral content with a link to the original creator's true source, all she succeeded in doing was to send a DMCA takedown notice and get the Facebook video page deleted, destroying all of the organic momentum that was pushing in her favor.
This problem will naturally become much worse now that Facebook has tweaked their algorithms to heavily favor the spread of videos directly uploaded to Facebook, while punishing external links to YouTube by automatically preventing them from becoming as popular.
Imgur has a similar problem which is especially damaging to webcomic artists. It is such a destructive problem that even /r/funny on reddit has banned the practice of sharing links to rehosted webcomics. Imgur, however, is still perfectly happy to do it. Every day you can find multiple webcomics on Imgur's front page containing an album of half of a webcomic artist's life's work, usually without any link to the creator's actual website. This pirated copy gains millions of views, and the artist is left with nothing to show for it, not even a page hit. All of those millions of views represent potential fans who perhaps would have liked to buy a book from the artist or some other merchandise, and the artist would have been able to pay the rent for another year. Instead, all of that money goes to Imgur ad revenue and T-shirt sales. Imgur also passively gets all the cognitive goodwill from their users who mistakenly associate the pleasure of reading the stolen comics with Imgur, rather than with the artist where it belongs. Most artists I inform of this theft are incredibly sad about it but have already reached the stage where they feel utterly defeated and helpless.
I feel that some sort of reform is needed to compel large sites to implement something similar to the Content ID system on YouTube, or at least require due diligence in finding the true creator and 302 redirecting the link of the stolen copy to the true source.
At least the New Yorker doesn't try to maximise ad revenue by splitting this across 25 pages.
PS: maybe authors are paid per word?
So no full summary here: partial summary is -- a16z and their ilk make Silicon Valley tick, Andreesen is a foul-mouthed visionary, Horowitz is less interesting, together they make a good team.
Don't mean to come across as glib. I enjoyed what I read and it's up to the New Yorker's typical standards.
Too much detail. The New Yorker should produce a tl;dr version like The Economist does (http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2014/11/economist-es...)
(health http://fortune.com/2015/04/10/brainstorming-with-marc-andree...
traitor http://www.cnbc.com/id/101733893)
This is a bit much? I do wish the down to earth couple well! That's the one positive about being broke; you never need to second quess their motives?