
Risky Business: Interview with Marc Andreessen (2018) - allenleein
https://www.startups.com/library/expert-advice/marc-andreessen
======
caiobegotti
Actual full interview, "Risky Business":
[https://www.startups.com/library/founder-stories/marc-
andree...](https://www.startups.com/library/founder-stories/marc-andreessen)

~~~
dang
Yes, this submission broke the site guidelines by not posting the original
source. Please don't do that.

Url changed now from [https://allenleein.github.io/2020/03/11/pmarca-flying-
car.ht...](https://allenleein.github.io/2020/03/11/pmarca-flying-car.html).

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phkahler
>> Those companies have to be run completely differently because the stakes
are so much higher.

I can't dismiss Elons drive, ability to get his hands dirty, and many other
characteristics. But the primary difference I see in this comparison is simply
risk aversion. YC and their VCs are in it to make money by placing a number of
small bets, knowing some will be losers. To go big like SpaceX requires you to
be all in. Elon nearly went broke a couple times. He's willing to take that
risk because he's in it for the results, not the money.

I used to wonder if it was just hype for employees and investors to say that
SpaceX goal was to make humanity multi planetary. The last couple years have
convinced me he's for real. The man could retire now. SpaceX could just own
the launch industry by cutting cost for a while, or sit back and enjoy higher
profits from reusability. But starship and mass production of it? Nonsense
unless the stated mission is for real.

People can do so much more if it's about the mission and not the money, and
that includes investors.

~~~
lukebuehler
> He's willing to take that risk because he's in it for the results, not the
> money.

Well put. Whatever anyone has to say about the man, the most incredible thing
about Elon is that he finds ways to pursue his crazy ideals while somehow
staying profitable.

~~~
Diederich
> crazy ideals while somehow staying profitable

His _main_ ideal, making humanity multi-planetary, requires a great deal of
profitability, because it's almost nobody else's goal.

My opinion is that he will, when the time is right, sell his holdings in Tesla
and dump all of that right back into SpaceX or whatever entity is pushing the
ball forward.

~~~
njarboe
Which, if he meets all the goals of Musk's incentive schedule at Tesla, will
be about $55 billion[1].

[1][https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-
compensation...](https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-compensation-
package-tranches-explainer)

~~~
Diederich
Yup! I don't think that structure is a coincidence.

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zackmorris
To me, the next great challenge of our time isn't finding the next SpaceX, but
gradually dismantling the corporate dogma of full employment. The short-term
goals should be along the lines of getting to a 30-hour work week, a single-
payer healthcare system, free college and UBI from an automation moonshot.

The long-term goals should be about how to get everyone in the world self-
actualized, but doing it sustainably so we don't destroy the planet in the
process. We'll be on renewable energy by 2030, but the real destruction is
happening due to manufacturing that we don't actually need. Getting demand
flipped so that we can get to a sustainable or non-growth based economy is
going to be tricky and may not happen before 2040-2050 as the singularity
looms.

My dream for this would look like a 20-hour or less work week, with a great
deal more capital available at the bottom with near-zero or negative interest
rates. Young people would train for a few years in something like a peace
corps doing the difficult work that nobody wants to do, then use the life
skills they've learned to eliminate those hardships for everyone else going
forward. Their degree or equivalent certificates would go towards hard
disciplines, advancing things like medicine where devotion and commitment to a
large organization is actually required.

But the rest of their time would be spent in their own endeavors in the
humanities or working in maker spaces to invent new things. That's where the
real innovation will come from. So instead of a the next SpaceX requiring $300
million, it will just need a few people with access to shared computing
resources so they can iterate unfettered by the time suck of the workaday
world.

We can look towards Star Trek for inspiration. In the meantime, I expect
everything to go the opposite direction from the way I suggested, just like it
has been for the last 20 years. We'll see more wealth inequality, more
disenfranchisement, more neocolonialism. Unfortunately it's probably going to
get worse before it gets better. But in spite of that, we can still envision
the dream and work to manifest change locally in our own lives, as we plant
seeds of hope globally.

~~~
kingludite
I wonder if we can re-purpose our [computer] networking jargon to network
humans. Since in biology the function is what drives maintenance and upgrades
simply using peoples thoughts (like yours) will expand the ability. (also by
example, _monkey see monkey do_ ) Perhaps something like supper nodes could
produce passable data sets.

------
api
Whenever I hear someone like Andreessen who is still a cryptocurrency
believer, I go and really look for what he's talking about. I find nothing.

I also have a routine search that I do when I look for something built on
cryptocurrency or the cryptocurrency ecosystem (e.g. Ethereum "dapps") that I
might want to actually use. I always come up empty handed.

Yet there are many smart people that believe in this stuff. Are they in a
parallel universe?

Where is it being transformational? All I see is gambling, speculation, scams,
solutions in search of a problem, and a ton of vaporware.

Beyond the core use cases of easier international wire transfer and black/grey
market commerce, I don't see anything in this space that people actually use
(excluding gambling and speculation).

I'm puzzled when I hear them compare it to the Internet. The Internet had
immediate real world use cases everywhere. I saw people all around me start to
get online and actually use the Internet for a huge variety of things. I don't
see _any_ of that with cryptocurrency. Nobody is using this stuff for
anything. It's got that classic worst-case solution in search of a problem
vibe: you can't _give_ it to people.

I get why bag holders and speculators sound bullish on cryptocurrency. They're
hoping more will buy in so they can dump at a higher price. I am genuinely and
deeply puzzled when I hear bright people who aren't in those groups who are
still believers. What do they see that I don't?

~~~
corporateslave5
The real issue with blockchain is it doesn’t work yet. It doesn’t scale, and
complex trustless scalable guarantees aren’t possible yet. The technology is
also really new. Bitcoin coin is only ten years old.

~~~
xkjkls
The iPhone is also 10 years old. It changed the world and has been the most
profitable product in human history. What is Bitcoin's excuse?

~~~
pedalpete
A few problems I see with your argument.

1) The iPhone wasn't the start of the curve. It was building on the history of
mobile phones, PDAs, WAP/mobile internet, portable music players, etc. It was
a convergent device which brought together all of these other things, many of
which had been successful in their own right. But you couldn't make the same
argument about the Newton, or PalmPilot, could you?

2) iPhone is a product, Blockchain/Bitcoin is a network and protocol. Networks
need mass adoption to be successful. You only needed one iPhone for it to be
useful. Protocols are infrastructure to be built on top of. The iPhone didn't
release with Apps (as we know them today) and could have still been successful
without them.

I'm not saying Bitcoin will be a success, and what would it be a success at is
still the open question. But you can't put it in the same bucket as the
iPhone.

------
starpilot
Blue Origin was founded two years before SpaceX. Knowing only what was public
around that time, would it be possible to predict which company would
flourish? SpaceX seemed riskier, Musk was all-in and he had a string of
spectacular launch failures. BO had the Amazon warchest at its disposal,
SpaceX just Musk's personal funds. Both looked like jokes at the time to my
aerospace colleagues.

~~~
avmich
> would it be possible to predict which company would flourish?

I'd say both have good chances. I'm actually surprised BO doesn't have better
achievements by now.

> Both looked like jokes at the time to my aerospace colleagues.

I assume some aerospace professionals still consider them jokes, which weights
on definition of professional. But SpaceX really does things differently - the
pioneers of space era (like von Braun, Korolev) could, I'm sure, understand
Musk, but aerospace professionals of 1990-2000 were trained in rather
different world.

~~~
starpilot
One thing stands out is how hands-on Musk has been. He's got a physics degree
and has the raw intelligence and passion to understand aerospace engineering.
From his public statements, he shows an understanding of mechanical
engineering WAY beyond most executives'. Bezos has been hands-off with BO and
is not technical. Similar with Vern Raburn (Microsoftie pilot) trying to run
Eclipse Aviation (nearly into the ground, as it was).

The problem is finding someone who understands the science enough, but is not
embedded in the old school culture that has been so limiting.

~~~
nikofeyn
> He's [Musk] got a physics degree and has the raw intelligence and passion to
> understand aerospace engineering.

musk was nearly laughed out of early meetings because he basically knew
nothing about aerospace engineering and was viewed as just a guy with a lot of
money, enthusiasm, and naivety.

i have never seen any indication that he understands as much as people freely
give him credit for.

> Bezos ... is not technical.

bezos has a degree in electrical engineering and computer science from
princeton. not sure what you consider technical.

~~~
cowmix
Well, I'm not sure what part of the SpaceX timeline you are talking about but
his "money, enthusiasm, and naivety" certainly has brought the company very,
very far in the past 17+ years.

~~~
xkjkls
It's still not a profitable company with alot of debt to payoff and a
valuation to justify. I don't know if we can consider 17 years without any
profitable sustainability a success.

~~~
avmich
Amazon roughly fits this profile, with their habit of investing money in
expanding markets instead of keeping profits.

SpaceX is the only company which returns first stage after flight, in workable
condition. In today's launch industry it's like a license to print money. It's
really hard not to consider them profitable, even if they are private and
don't show financial results.

~~~
xkjkls
Amazon has only been unprofitable one year since 2001, and cash flow positive
every single year. They are the exact opposite of Tesla because they didn't
require returning to the capital markets every two quarters.

> In today's launch industry it's like a license to print money. It's really
> hard not to consider them profitable, even if they are private and don't
> show financial results.

Every report on their financial results says they are unprofitable, and they
continue to want to raise more and more money.

------
thisisbrians
A huge issue here is that venture capital's classic business model isn't
compatible with SpaceX-scale ventures because they take way too long to return
value to investors. SpaceX took 6 years just to complete a demonstration
flight to LEO, for instance, whereas a VC is looking for a liquidation event
in the ~7 year timeframe.

~~~
forkerenok
I think VC game is evolving and there should be a group of VC investors or a
chunk of VC money aiming at longer and riskier shots.

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arikr
We need new staged financing models for projects like this.

$500mm for x project, released upon these pre agreed milestones. Like the way
it works in large scale infrastructure or some construction financing.

~~~
loganfrederick
This is similar to what Eric Reis outlines as an innovation financing model in
his book "The Startup Way": [https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Way-Companies-
Entrepreneurial...](https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Way-Companies-
Entrepreneurial-Management-ebook/dp/B01MYG4MNA/)

*No affiliation. Just thought that his innovation financing and accounting models were the most interesting part of the book.

------
fit2rule
I'm kind of more interested in the political system that the first Martian
base-camp will adhere to .. and how it will be organised at a socio-economic
level - are the first Martians going to have economy based on Access to Earth,
etc?

I know its at least 20 - 50 years away from being any kind of reality, but
surely there are smart people working on this problem. What's to stop Elons'
Martian crew from mutiny and sedition .. a firm dependence on Earth?

Should we, therefore, go there before we get a chance to be independent as a
colony - clearly there is as lot more work to be done on the subject of a
self-sufficient colony, but how is that going to work out economically and
socially, I wonder?

Doesn't seem to me to be getting enough attention. Or, are there existing
structures and organisational models that would be exported to the Mars
colony?

Startups on Mars? Free oxygen and access to the Starship hub for anyone who
wants to colonise?

~~~
nickik
F.A. Hayek always talked about local knowledge, and he picked up the idea of
tacid knowledge from Polanyi.

I think the specific conditions we will face in a second phase of mars
expansion, are gone be limited and determined by local condition at that point
in time.

I think its a total fools ear fool's errandnd to try to reason this out in a
theoretical setting such a long time ahead.

Looking at research from Elenor Ostrom it seems pretty evident that a group of
people with local knowledge can far easier and more efficiently solve most
common resource problems then remote governments or cooperation can. And the
same will very much be true on Mars.

------
gwern
(2014)

> Plenty of conferences and magazines feature interviews with Andreessen where
> he talks about the future. What’s difficult is getting a man so excited
> about the future to talk about the past. The following is the story of how
> Andreessen became Andreessen… rarely told at a Pando event in 2014.

------
szczepano
Why can't we just build robots and lay at home while driving them across
galactic or build a big aquarium for brain like in futurama ? Touching can be
stimulated by hardware, people wake up.

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ExodusOrbitals1
Spot on. We'll try to be the next one.

