
The IPO is dying – Marc Andreessen explains why - ascertain
http://www.vox.com/2014/6/26/5837638/the-ipo-is-dying-marc-andreessen-explains-why
======
wpietri
I have enormous respect for Andreessen when he's talking on topics of his
expertise, as in the first half of the article. And it's not just his talk,
either; A16Z is a deeply impressive operation. But so far I find his take on
Piketty shallow and unpersuasive; it strikes me more as the view that is
convenient for him to have, rather than one of deep study and experience. I'd
rather he stuck to what he knows.

~~~
reason
I follow Andreessen and a few of the other a16z folks on twitter, and every
day they are tweetstorming what appear to be very insightful opinions and
predictions on a whole slew of industries. And then I wonder if these guys are
actually orders of magnitudes more intelligent than me and others, and have
truly valid and well thought-out opinions, or if a good amount of what they
say is nothing more than speculative bullshit that's hardly contested due to
their reputation and success.

I've got enormous respect for them, too, but I'm beginning to think that the
breadth and depth of expertise and foresight they display shouldn't be taken
too seriously.

~~~
beachstartup
no doubt andreessen is smarter, both in raw intelligence and financial wisdom,
than you or i or the next guy, but the billions of dollars at his command to
assist in manifesting his will helps quite a bit.

and so does being at the nexus of the tech industry and seeing the entire
ecosystem from the inside-out, "behind the curtain" so to speak. they have a
lot of insider information, not the least of which is basically every single
pitch that comes across every other VC's desk in town, and the actual
financial health of funded companies operating in the marketplace. they all
share information, that's why they don't sign NDAs.

~~~
tonetheman
> no doubt andreessen is smarter, both in raw intelligence and financial
> wisdom, than you or i or the next guy

Nope nope nope. Money does not make you instantly smarter than everyone else.

Not sure why this is my craw... but everytime I see andreessen mentioned I
always end up thinking of the crazy "Snowden is a traitor" bit. ah well.

------
rayiner
Here's an interesting presentation with some statistics:
[http://www.sec.gov/info/smallbus/acsec/acsec-090712-ritter-s...](http://www.sec.gov/info/smallbus/acsec/acsec-090712-ritter-
slides.pdf). Here's the associated paper:
[http://fisher.osu.edu/supplements/10/12092/Where%20Have_Apri...](http://fisher.osu.edu/supplements/10/12092/Where%20Have_April_3_2012.pdf).

Section 6-7 of the paper are most relevant. Section 6 analyzes the question of
whether SOX is causing a decrease in IPO's using estimations of SOX compliance
costs. It concludes that: "[w]e find the effect of paying the compliance cost
on the profitability for small firms to be limited." They also look at whether
SOX compliance is driving U.S. companies to other countries that don't have
such a regulatory regime: "[i]f SOX is an important reason for why companies,
especially small companies, are not listing in the U.S., we might observe many
U.S. companies going public abroad." They do not find that effect to exist.

They present the alternative hypothesis: that there is an increasing benefit
to being part of a large firm (being acquired via M&A) than there is to being
a small, independent public firm (doing an IPO). They analyze this hypothesis
in section 7, by looking at the post-IPO behavior of companies. They
hypothesize that if the burden of regulation is the driving force, we might
see many companies go private after IPO-ing. Alternative, if it's the
increased advantages of scale, we will see companies be acquired post-IPO.
They find evidence of an increasing number of companies being acquired within
three years of an IPO.

They conclude: "We posit that there has been a fundamental change in many
sectors of the economy whereby the importance of bringing products to market
quickly has increased. This hypothesized change has resulted in lower profits
for independent small companies relative to the potential profits generated as
part of a larger organization that can realize economies of scope and rapidly
expand production. If this explanation is correct, fewer firms are going
public and staying independent because value is being created in a sale to a
strategic buyer in the same or related industry."

~~~
tptacek
This is why so many networking companies sell to Cisco, and why Cisco's
business strategy depends so much on M&A: Cisco's great asset isn't IOS, but
instead that it runs one of the world's most powerful enterprise sales
operations. If you sell network equipment, the basic concept of comparative
advantage almost guarantees that Cisco can do a better job extracting value
from it than you can.

~~~
larrys
"If you sell network equipment, the basic concept of comparative advantage
almost guarantees that Cisco can do a better job extracting value from it than
you can."

Doesn't take into account branding, sales, and marketing of a new organization
which are always able to drive business purchases. Even in face of a
formidable competitor.

Of course if you want to look at things at a point in time you could also be
correct. But roll back to when Cisco started and see if there were companies
that also had "one of the world's most powerful enterprise sales operations"
that lost out to someone else. Like Cisco.

So while you could be correct it's also possible that "many networking
companies sell to Cisco," because it's a "pay window".

After all wouldn't that be one of the reasons that you sold your company?

~~~
tptacek
Not so much, no.

------
credo
Marc Andreessen is being true to form when he attacks regulations, attacks
Piketty and suggests that IPOs will flourish if we remove (what he describes
as) "burdensome" regulations, "Regulation Fair Disclosure" etc.

However, he seems to be totally glossing over the fact that IPO regulations
have already been weakened in recent years. This has resulted in less
transparency and increased secrecy and that is exactly what people like
Andreessen have been asking for.

It is questionable whether this increased secrecy actually benefits the
economy or the average investor (of course, it is clear that the lack of
transparency does benefit powerful interests in the country and that is why a
bipartisan majority in our dysfunctional congress was able to miraculously
come together and pass a bill to reduce regulations and cut down on IPO
transparency). [http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/13/the-
twitter-i...](http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/13/the-twitter-i-p-
o-investor-beware/) touched on this topic in the context of Twitter's IPO.

------
lifeisstillgood
""" It's technically illegal to manipulate the market. But there are hardly
ever any cases [enforcing these laws]. Basically the hedge funds run
absolutely wild and do whatever they want."""

There's your problem right there. There is a great TED podcast from one of the
regulators on savings and loans ("how to rob a bank from the inside") that
said basically "we failed to stop either crash but we jailed 9,000 people the
last time - this time not one got prosecuted."

I think we have lost our willingness to prosecute big business. I mean Madoff
was prosecuted because he was just nakedly fraudulent, but an entire industry
pretended liars loans was just a phrase.

So, want a better stock market, want smaller IPOs, want stronger financial
system. Hire cops and let them do their work. We don't prevent murder or
robbery - we prosecute it. Same here.

~~~
sbierwagen

      I mean Madoff was prosecuted because he was just nakedly 
      fraudulent
    

Close, but not quite.

[http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/05/cyberbll.html](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/05/cyberbll.html)

    
    
      Here's a "class struggle" example: name one Wall Street type 
      who went to jail post 2008, everyone picks Bernie Madoff. Now 
      name one person you know who was harmed by Bernie Madoff.
       
      That's weird. 
      
      Note he didn't cause the crash, his criminal 
      empire was a "victim" of the crash. What got him jailed was 
      stealing from the wrong people-- that the media coded as either 
      "celebrities" or "pension funds".

~~~
nevilledavis
Dear Reader, 30th June 2014

It is true that Madoff did not cause the 2008 crash but don't tell me that the
public at large do not know one or some of the hundreds of thousands of
VICTIMS from the fallout of the 2008 crash, which Bernie Madoff, Allen
Stanford and other fraudulent financial institutions and bankers were party
to. As usual the media looks after itself scandalising the truth to sell copy.
As a Madoff class action lead plaintiff these past 5 years who has followed
most aspects of Madoff related litigation together with cause and effect, I
know that it is a misrepresentation to promote the idea that only celebrities
or pension funds were defrauded. Indeed pension funds were attracted to Madoff
and Madoff related investment schemes as their track record was in fact
conservative, showing a consistent modest profit over a long period of time.
To wrongly believe that individuals where not harmed is because the silent
majority do not have the money to hire lawyers to fight their case. Many of
the INDIRECT VICTIMS were pensioners like myself, having worked hard all their
lives in order to provide for themselves and their families and then duped by
bankers and unscrupulous financial institutions who had jumped on the Madoff
money making merry-go-round. The US Justice Department has received over
51,700 Claims from 119 countries for more than $40 Billion US dollars. When
you understand that Irvin Picard the Trustee for the liquidation of Bernard L.
Madoff Investment Securities LLC (BLMIS)has distributed nearly $10 Billions to
Madoff Direct Victims and taken nearly $1 Billion in expenses and legal fees
and that there are still claims for over $40 Billions from INDIRECT VICTIMS
outstanding, gives one an understanding of the enormity of the crime and the
complicity and involvement of the 'Established Financial Institutions' For
verification check the Madoff related web sites.
[http://www.madofftrustee.com](http://www.madofftrustee.com)
[http://www.madoffvictimfund.com](http://www.madoffvictimfund.com) Sincerely
NevilleSeymourDavis NevilleDavis@me.com

~~~
nevilledavis
Correction: The figure quoted for distribution from the Madoff trustee. It
should have read that the Madoff trustee has recovered nearly $10 Billions and
distributed over $5 Billions. NevilleDavis@me.com

------
mr_luc
I'd love to ask Andreessen, (or anyone here, really) a question informed by a
book on pg's reading list:

I, too, am dubious about Pikkety's thesis. But I'd like to call out a
distinction between the concentration of wealth, and the static nature of the
oligarchy. One will continue to happen, the other Pikkety could be dead wrong
about.

Andreessen says (paraphrasing) in the interview, 'Pikkety says wealth and
oligarchies will happen, but look at the Forbes 400 and you see lots of churn,
where is this supposed stability that will happen with rich people cementing
their gains'.

It's true that Pikkety presents a view of social mobility becoming
increasingly static, and reverting to a supposed historical norm.

But one lovely book I have pg to thank for reading, "The World We Have Lost",
talks about how things were in England according to an analysis of actual data
(county records etc). One chapter, 'The One-Class Society' ('gentlemen' were
the class, the only class that mattered), speaks of how there actually _was_ a
large amount of 'churn' in the gentleman class -- even outside of cities and
the merchant classes, it was possible for a father to become a substantial
yoeman, and his heir to become a gentleman. Families went up, families went
down.

But despite a certain amount of mobility being possible, all effective wealth
and power that mattered was still very concentrated, as it has been for much
of recorded human history, for many reasons.

This was momentarily interrupted by the usefulness of humans as wet robots
that were briefly able to exert the political and economic leverage necessary
to drive hard collective bargains about their compensation.

That was temporary. (Offshore wet robots, and eventually dry robots, taking
the place of the less-needed troublemakers).

Wealth, even if mobile, will inevitably become more concentrated due simply to
better technology and efficiency -- how can this not be so? It seems self-
evident.

So, I guess the question is:

If technology magnifies individual differences in productivity, and if we
accept as a given that attempting to tax away the resulting fruits of that
productivity is on the whole economically injurious to an economy, how can
wealth not become more concentrated over time?

(Yes, of course, there will be churn and disruption, and wealth will change
hands. Even as it did among the gentleman class in England in the 1500s;
families came up and families went down. But because of technological
magnification of productivity it should tend to go to fewer people. This just
seems like a natural law.)

~~~
DenisM
>and if we accept as a given that attempting to tax away the resulting fruits
of that productivity is on the whole economically injurious to an economy

I wouldn't accept that.

Obviously 100% confiscatory tax rates would remove personal motivation. But
there is a great deal of room below 100%, that would both allow for
redistribution of wealth and for plentiful motivation for the overachievers.

Consider a scheme where typical capitalist is 100 richer than typical worker -
still plenty of room for motivation, don't you think?

Besides that, inheritance tax does a lot to redistribute wealth, without
necessarily destroying the motivation.

Another thing I can imagine is that wealthy individual will have to spend the
money he made, or have it taxed heavily. All the lavish consumption is still a
good motivator for working hard and getting rich, but without as much long
term inequality.

Bottom line is that motivating best performers is not necessarily incompatible
with redistribution.

~~~
lisper
> there is a great deal of room below 100%, that would both allow for
> redistribution of wealth and for plentiful motivation for the overachievers

Indeed. The _lowest_ top marginal tax rate in the U.S. between 1940 and 1980
was 70%, and it went as high as 90%. That didn't exactly kill innovation or
growth.

~~~
ScottBurson
No, it didn't, did it?

It always amuses me to reflect that the time that we were most afraid of
communism was also the time that we were closest to accepting it, at least if
the marginal tax rates are any indication.

Anyway I don't think I could support 90% or even 70%, but I could definitely
get behind 50%.

~~~
mr_luc
I agree with the gist of these comments; all I meant by that bit put that bit
was to make the argument about the inevitability of inequality's increase a
more conservative one. It seems obvious (to me) that redistribution, maybe in
the form of basic income, is an inevitable result of this 'natural law' of
increasing inequality.

That said: people did not pay those rates in the 50s[1]:

    
    
      The Internal Revenue Service reckoned that the effective rate of tax in 
      1954 for top earners was actually 70 percent.
     
      Or lower. Marc Linder, a law professor at the University of Iowa, has 
      shown that a more comprehensive interpretation of income that 
      includes capital gains suggests the real effective tax rate for millionaires 
      was 49 percent in 1953. The effective rate dropped throughout the 
      decade, reaching 31 percent by 1960. That 31 percent is just slightly 
      higher than the 29 percent level a Congressional Budget Office report 
      figures the average effective tax for the top quintile will be in 2014.
    

\---

[1]
[http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-01-02/1950s-tax-f...](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-01-02/1950s-tax-
fantasy-is-a-republican-nightmare)

~~~
ScottBurson
Just to be clear, lisper and I were talking about _marginal_ tax rates, not
overal effective rates. Only for the very highest earners does the effective
rate approach the top marginal rate.

------
tptacek
Is it just a little disingenuous to suggest that the public is prevented from
enjoying the benefit of company growth because they aren't allowed to invest
in venture capital funds? They can't, of course. But they can invest in other
vehicles that can.

Individual investors can't _directly_ benefit from Facebook's appreciation the
way they could Microsoft's. But their retirement fund sure can.

Meanwhile, there's probably a strong case to be made that in the large,
individual investors _shouldn 't try_ to hit these kinds of home runs, because
they're outgunned by institutional investors and they don't have the capacity
to diversify as well as institutional investors can.

~~~
gaadd33
Are there many funds from Vanguard or Fidelity that are regular participants
in Series D/E rounds of funding? Or do you mean that an entity like CALPERS
can invest some amount in the various VC funds? In the latter case, I think
its been shown that VC as an asset class (invested in that manner)
significantly underperforms the public market.

~~~
tptacek
Not only _can_ pension funds like CalPERS invest in VC firms, but they do,
often by design --- they have asset class requirements that militate for VC.
Entities like CalPERS are actually one of the engines behind VC funds.

------
justin66
There are a few genuinely odd statements about the stock market, including
pretty much all the bits that involve the word "growth." I wonder if he knows
about the Fama-French model and that value usually performs much better for
investors. Maybe acknowledging that would mean acknowledging that for a while
there, valuations were just nutty.

I never know what to make of that kind of complaining about shorts.

The "The returns degrade down to S&P 500 levels" statement about investment
managers was strange. Often those guys don't match S&P 500 returns and so that
level wouldn't be a degradation...

The whole thing has a feel that makes me wonder if he was misquoted or
something.

------
drawkbox
He does make excellent points about the public market, it is in a tough spot
and something does have to be done. SOX was a nightmare reaction in the wrong
direction and we can see the effects a decade later. Crowdfunding might even
be a side effect of this sideways investment market.

Maybe the stock market needs more risk tiers with differing levels of
regulation, even a growth market where regulations are relaxed for smaller
companies, essentially private investment open to public. One size fits all of
the public market will regulate all the growth out, it is not even really an
option for small-medium business to even try anymore like he says.

------
mjburgess
He blames the SOX act for decreasing the number of IPOs but they were already
down from 100s/year in the 80s to 80 in 2001 (before sox) and this trend
continued. He seems to be performing the slight-of-hand anti-regulatory BS
that accompanies the right these days: "over here there is a problem - over
there is some regulation; wink wink nudge nudge".

~~~
frandroid
Are you seriously taking the post-dotcom-bubble crash as the boundary to
compare the 80s to?

I still agree with you, even with your own sleight of hand. :)

~~~
mjburgess
No, just two end points to draw a negative correlation between that keeps
going today. It isnt hilly. So the introduction of SOX as an explanation for
decreasing IPOs is BS.

------
mmaunder
Whether or not you agree with Marc, I'm always impressed at how persuasive he
is and I come away with new data and new additions to my reading list.

He talks about the drop in the number of US public companies being caused by
the lack of new IPO's. It's also fueled by private equity delisting public
companies, Dell being a prime example in October of last year.

The benefits of staying private are not just due to the onerous regulatory
requirements. Delisting has tax benefits. It also concentrates ownership and
provides flexibility in executive compensation - and both of these resolve
some conflicts of interest between public investors and the exec team.

Staying private or going private also provides you with defensibility against
takeover - one less thing for the exec team to worry about so they can get on
with the job.

There's also less transparency in the organization which can give you a
competitive advantage.

------
mfringel
In general, predictions from influential people can be translated as "My life
will get a whole lot more convenient if x happens."

~~~
muzz
Agreed. Not sure why more people don't question when someone says something
will benefit the "middle class" are they just saying that out of their own
self-interest?

------
masterjack
These are some great points about the challenges of going public, but I wonder
how much of it is just a deliberate logical decision to reap the most
benefits. There's an incredible amount of capital flowing around (to the
extent that in many cases it doesn't seem to be the limiting factor as in
classical economic theory. And remember when YC decided to decrease the
investment for practicality reasons?) so why would you IPO as Facebook at 1B
when you get both more attractive private offers and also you can get enough
new investment until the IPO value is at 100B.

------
dreamfactory2
Erm, he is claiming that companies don't go public due to unchecked market
rigging and that somehow regulation rather than lack of it is to blame - the
doublethink is strong in this one.

And I've no idea why somebody who is in investment wouldn't be well aware that
secular bear markets are typically longer than 10 years
([http://www.tradingonlinemarkets.com/Articles/Trend_Following...](http://www.tradingonlinemarkets.com/Articles/Trend_Following_Strategies/History_of_Stock_Market_Cycles.htm)).

He seems to be a complete buffoon from this interview.

~~~
ScottBurson
He is arguing that the force of that regulation falls unfairly on public
companies, against whom it can be enforced effectively, and not on individuals
starting rumors, who are numerous and hard to track down. That's not a silly
claim.

~~~
dreamfactory2
The problem he is talking about is market manipulation. Let's be clear,
disclosure is precisely to prevent market rigging by insider trading and
indirection (as the notion of a free market depends on all participants having
equal information). He's in fact advocating going back to an insider's club
and trying to dress it up as the opposite. I don't know if he's just stupid or
he thinks the readers are.

------
adventured
Some data points for the discussion.

There were more IPOs in the first quarter of 2014, than in the first quarter
of 1999 (which makes sense given the market highs):

[http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-ipos-partying-like-
its-1...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-ipos-partying-like-
its-1999-again-2014-04-02)

And this year is tracking to be the best year since 1999 / 2000:

[http://www.renaissancecapital.com/ipohome/press/ipopricings....](http://www.renaissancecapital.com/ipohome/press/ipopricings.aspx)

------
al2o3cr
"It suggests you're going to have a gigantic productivity boom. Isn't that the
world we want to live in?"

Depends. If the future is like the last 30 years, we'll see another
"productivity boom" but zero rise in real wages.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
There were rises in real wages from 1980 until 2000 - but they weren't in all
the places they were looked for. You had large populations of high-wage
earners wiped out - steel, autos, that sort of thing.

In 1980, being an IT worker was basically a $10 an hour job.

~~~
frandroid
Yeah, that person was talking about the sum total of real wages, and you're
talking about a sector by sector comparison...

~~~
ArkyBeagle
How would you go about even comparing them, really?

~~~
_delirium
Often what people quote is the median real wage, across the whole economy.
There are other measures as well, but it's one fairly simple one that gives a
trend for whether the middle portion of the workforce is seeing wage growth.
Rather than looking at wage changes within sectors, shifts between sectors,
etc., it just looks at the aggregate end result: do all these changes add up
to the the 50th-percentile American wage earner getting more or less money?

~~~
ArkyBeagle
That is indeed one way. I am just unsure it's all that meaningful.

------
betadreamer
I wished these articles concentrated more on the solution. It is easy to say
what is not working. He mentions that public company is not going to grow as
much, but then where should we put our retirement money in?

~~~
ahomescu1
I think he hints at the solution: reduce regulation (he names Sarbanes-Oxley
as one problem).

~~~
api
If we did that, wouldn't people just run more Enron-type scams?

Fraudsters and con men have been engaged in a Red Queen's race against
investor intelligence and government regulation since there has been
economies.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_Hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_Hypothesis)

These regulations might be messy but they contain valuable information that
has been learned from this arms race. They're patches to try to prevent the
same thing from happening again. It's much like computer security, where OSes
and network protocols are constantly patched or re-engineered to be resistant
to newer attacks. "Attacks only get better."

It may however be possible to improve Sarbox by reducing its complexity,
thereby reducing the complexity tax that harms smaller companies and
discourages growth IPOs.

~~~
ahomescu1
> They're patches to try to prevent the same thing from happening again.

Prevention by regulation IMHO creates as many problems as it solves because it
punishes everyone involved, not just the guilty. I'm more in favor of
prosecution (for fraud or insider trading, for example) as a method of
prevention (where you just get punished for breaking the law after the fact).

~~~
rayiner
The problem is that there is little will to prosecute people when things go
really wrong. In terms of domestic politics, Arthur Andersen-ing a company and
putting thousands of people out of work is untenable. And in a globalized
economy, you don't want to develop the reputation of being the country that
puts rich people in jail.

~~~
ahomescu1
> And in a globalized economy, you don't want to develop the reputation of
> being the country that puts rich people in jail.

If they've broken the law and are found guilty, that's exactly what you want
(rule of law, equality before the law and all that). Otherwise, I agree with
you.

~~~
rayiner
The problem is that "[i]f they've broken the law" is not such a clear-cut
question. Sometimes it is (WorldCom), sometimes it isn't (Qwest):
[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/top-10-ceos-in-prison-whyd-
they-...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/top-10-ceos-in-prison-whyd-they-do-it).
This is especially true with white collar crime, where the difference between
legal and illegal activity often revolves around intent. There is definitely
the potential for the government to use white collar laws to keep meddlesome
rich people in line.

~~~
ahomescu1
In the US, isn't that what a jury is supposed to decide? In other places, it's
the judge's decision.

~~~
rayiner
Sure, but a jury trial is in itself a pretty disruptive thing. And it's very
easy to bias juries against rich people, for obvious reasons. Even if the
person is acquitted, it can be an effective way of keeping people in line.

Consider the investigation of Mark Cuban for insider trading, which didn't
even result in an indictment or prosecution. I don't think it was politically
motivated, but the mere possibility of that made a lot of people nervous.

------
bsaul
Maybe someone who's read piketty book can explain something to me ? From what
i've read, It claims that wealth growth is superior to economic growth, in the
long term. But how can this be possible, since wealth growth is a part of
economic growth ?

I mean, if a big family own a lot of real estates, and that real estate gains
value, then doesn't this increase of value also makes the general economy grow
as well ?

It can't be as trivial, so there's probably something i'm missing in the
definitions. Anyone ?

~~~
kjjw
What is economic growth here?

Piketty discussed the return on capital versus earnings. He doesn't claim one
is superior to the other, or even that in the long run one will certainly
trump the other. He simply argues based on the evidence that it is likely that
in the long run, because it appears that the long trend is negligible economic
and demographic growth, there is no intrinsic law within capitalism that
ensures capital returns will not become so important that inequality can reach
massive levels.

------
lifeisstillgood
There is a good LSE podcast of a Pikkety lecture - hard to follow in his
accent but interesting. Anyway, he mentions Europe has the greatest
accumulation of wealth yet, but does not mention the massive tax windfall that
will be inheritance tax after the baby boomer generation pass on - it may be
that instead of using income tax to adjust inequality we simply uE inheritance
tax to redistribute the wealth

"each generation should earn their own way" could be Pikkety new and less
attractive call to arms

------
trhway
Today's late stages financing rounds eclipse IPOs of yesterday's. One reason
is inflation - more than 2 times during the last 10 years. Another is that the
game has moved one step upstream. In the first boom people inside were caching
in at the IPO thus leaving IPO buyers to hold the bug. These buyers think that
they have learned the lesson and now they are getting in at the late stages
before IPO - thus letting the inside people to cache in and leave these buyers
to hold the bug.

------
cyphunk
Marc Andreesson, the same person that believes Snowden is a traitor. Just cant
get past his logic

------
ahomescu1
My favorite part (pure gold): _This is so powerful in the conventional wisdom
right now. I love the Daily Show like everyone else does. But literally [Jon
Stewart 's] answer to every issue is Congress should pass a law. [People think
you can] solve any problem by passing enough laws._

~~~
muzz
People generally applaud things they already agree with, be it Jon Stewart's
audience or Marc Andreessen's.

~~~
ahomescu1
I don't get your point. The relevant part of that quote is _[People think you
can] solve any problem by passing enough laws_ , not the Jon Stewart
reference. You can be a member of both audiences.

Edit: I think this is an interesting discussion well worth having. From my
experience talking to people, many believe that if government introduces
exactly the right laws, we'll wind up with a utopia, which is IMHO very naive.
Very few people consider the drawbacks and unintended consequences of each
law.

------
powera
This is a bit of a flippant dismissal, but the interview reads as if it's Mitt
Romney answering the questions, not someone in the tech community.

~~~
_delirium
It's been many years since Andreessen's day-to-day concerns have been tech-
related, rather than finance-related. Not too surprising he would have
opinions common among people in the finance sector, considering that's what he
lives and breathes (this doesn't mean they're right or wrong, just that they
are unsurprising for someone coming from finance culture).

It probably doesn't help that he's in business and daily contact with Ben
Horowitz, who is even more sucked into the norms of that culture (check out
the comments on
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7191642](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7191642)).

~~~
dgreensp
Can you give examples of which opinions you consider "finance sector norms"
rather than a more neutral or individual viewpoint?

