
Marc Andreessen Says Now's the Time to Build Companies Like It's 1999 - azazo
http://allthingsd.com/20120716/marc-andreessen-says-nows-the-time-to-build-companies-like-its-1999/
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marcamillion
Well, I (for one) am happy to be alive right now. I am happy to be in the
generation after people like Marc Andreessen and Elon Musk, who were 1
generation after Bill Gates & Steve Jobs.

Here is the guy that invented modern day browsers, and modern day SaaS
services/companies, and is revolutionizing VC investing. It's like he can't do
anything 'normally'.

I love it.

We need more people like that, in the world, willing to shake things up.

Either way, I will be one of those heeding his advice about trying to build
awesome internet companies - because he is dead on the money.

Imagine, at the height of the automobile revolution if someone came to you and
showed you an 'easy' way to build solid, quality cars in your garage and mass
manufacture them for free/cheap and distribute them and sell them on the
cheap. Effectively taking advantage of economies of scale without having to
pay for the scale.

I can't think of any other industry/revolution/time in history when people
could do (from a company building perspective) what we can today with the
addressable market size we have access to, with such low distribution costs.

The same thing applies to creating content and media.

How can I not take his advice?

~~~
ballooney
> How can I not take his advice?

For example, you might have a good idea in some interesting field that doesn't
happen to particularly involve the Internet.

At the moment it just seems like everyone arriving in California with a tent
and a picaxe because they heard they'll get rich. Overly romantic maybe but I
prefer the other way round with the chicken and egg.

~~~
marcamillion
Well....while I would agree that many are flocking to California, but the
beauty about the internet is that you don't have to be there to make a good
living.

Also, that doesn't mean that everybody needs to build the largest companies
they can. But, it does mean that everybody that wants to - can.

If you have the ability to, you probably should at least try.

What's the worst that can happen? Even if you go for broke and end up being
broke, given that you were the type to go for broke, it's highly likely that
you will be very employable.

~~~
calinet6
> the beauty about the internet is that you don't have to be there to make a
> good living.

I do hope you're not mistaking the incredible location-agnostic quality of the
internet with the incredible location-dependent quality of human
relationships.

Don't take real people for granted. IMHO you hugely multiply your chances if
you surround yourself with people in the same physical space and can talk,
work, play, and drink together. In my experience, the great ideas come when
you are _away_ from your computers.

There are a lot of places this can happen—SF, Boston, New York, and more. But
I highly encourage you to make physical connections as well as digital ones.

~~~
marcamillion
I agree...but I don't have to be living in SF, Boston, New York to create
those connections either.

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danielpal
Title is quite misleading. It seems to imply we should build companies like
they used to in 1999 (webvan style). What he is actually saying is that is now
time to build companies that people tried in 1999 but were too early. It's now
time to revisit all of those ideas. This is actually quite obvious to most
people by now.

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petercooper
_Andreessen said the firm has made an investment in a third hardware company
that he declined to name. “We’ve recently made a stealthy investment that we
can’t talk about, but hopefully next year everyone will get to take one home
to the kids.”_

I so hope he means OUYA!

Generally speaking though, wasn't the Web 2.0 era the one where people dusted
themselves down, said 1999 was "too early" and did things right? Andreessen's
optimism is infectious, but it doesn't feel like this article says much that's
new.

~~~
gruuuuuuuu
OUYA has no chance of success. It's a wishy washy and poorly thought out
venture that's somehow hoodwinked a lot of people.

~~~
nestlequ1k
Except people really want what they're building. The fact that its bringing
out such passionate hatred from folks is a good sign for them I think.

~~~
simonh
I don't think it's hatred at all, for me it's despair. A product like that
well supported by game publishers, with an innovative controller and accessory
market around it would be fantastic.

It's just that it's not going to happen.

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chimi
It's kind of like a used car salesman saying now is the time to own a car!

~~~
brc
I read a local free real estate advertising magazine.

Every week, the editorial has a message that fits the latest data.

Every week, the conclusion is that NOW is the time to buy real estate.

If the market is strong, get in before it is too late. If the market is weak,
good time to be a buyer. If the market is very weak, take advantage of those
distressed sellers.

It really is amusing. It's more blatant than most self-interested publishing,
but so much of what we read follows the same script in more subtle ways.

~~~
re_todd
Yeah, I sometimes listen to a real estate show on Saturday on the radio, and
the guy says basically the same things. It is always the right time to buy.

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kayman
So can we go through list of companies that tried and failed in 1999 & see if
its feasible now?

~~~
dangrossman
Sure, here's the list: [http://www.amazon.com/Fd-Companies-Spectacular-Dot-
Com-Flame...](http://www.amazon.com/Fd-Companies-Spectacular-Dot-Com-
Flameouts/dp/0743228626/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342497633&sr=8-1&keywords=fucked+companies)

Used copies start at a penny.

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capkutay
I thought in 1999 most companies just slapped ".com" to the end of their
company name and raised $50m from VC's without accomplishing anything or
solving a specific problem.

~~~
Nursie
The current suffix is 'cloud'.

The industry movers and shakers (marketeers) will be sure to tell us what the
next word is shortly.

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nerd_in_rage
If it's 1999 again, you know what's around the corner, right? _pop_

~~~
scottmagdalein
A weasel? I'm confused.

~~~
ehsanu1
Bubble.

------
Zenst
In 1999 most were doing the headless chicken over y2k

It's 2012 now, lets not go there.

Though I do like the old time issue cover with the whole V Chip thing, oh wait
we have that covered as well this time around as well. Guess he may be right,
but it's only because computers has become more idiot friendly and mobiles
going for a compressed birth life period going from early png like games to
full media ones in a shorter time than desktops did and converging and bluring
the lines.

Only way to build a company is to gamble and do it quickly or slowly and do it
organicly. Both have there plus points and negatives. Only people who realy
gain from a massive influx of new companies are those that finance them. But
nothing in the article stands out that could make a bullet point out of IMHO.

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raheemm
In one sense he is right though. There is a lot of crappy software still out
there. There are still places that run off of an Access db. Ripping and
replacing these is finally starting to make sense from cost and value
proposition. Mobile access, greatly reduced cost of building apps is finally
tilting the needle towards "lemme build this" for devs and "lemme buy this"
for users.

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confluence
I've always felt kind of sorry (is that the word?) for Marc Andreessen - he
never quite could get a good exit out of anything he has ever done. This
despite the fact that his browser (and company) set off the feeding frenzy
that we know as the dot com boom (and bust).

Netscape/Loudscloud/Opsware ended their lives as pity acquisitions, and Ning
never did get off the ground.

Hopefully this venture fund works out and doesn't blow up in 2016 or so.

But he is right on the money with this though:

> _From there he pivoted to an argument that the consumer electronics industry
> is coming back to the U.S. Yes, it’s true, he says, that products like
> iPhones and tablets get assembled in China, but they often include
> components made in the U.S. and run software that more often than not was
> designed in the U.S. “You have to ask where the profits go, and they really
> go to the U.S. The assembly part is really an arbitrage of labor and
> transport costs.”_

The only reason we make stuff in China is because of the cheap labor (yes
really). Robotics and more scalable production designs (you know things that
don't require people to touch the production line) will destroy this
advantage. Transporting goods thousands of kilometres from production to
consumption is just insanely wasteful.

~~~
benjaminwootton
I'm sure he isn't going hungry!

~~~
confluence
Haha indeed - but that's not what I really mean :D.

Netscape was the trigger for a great deal of what you see around you on the
Internet today. Obviously, that doesn't mean that if they didn't exist - no
one would've done it.

But my point is this: for the first guy to IPO into what started the craze -
he didn't get out with too much.

Indeed, if you were to just look at Broadcast.com, which sold for ~$5 billion
at the height of the dot com boom, Mark Cuban pulled ~$2 billion for something
I think was quietly killed shortly thereafter (i.e. no real impact).

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JVIDEL
I get the message but he shouldn't use "1999", lots of companies founded that
year were doomed from the start, and even some good ones couldn't get enough
funding after the industry collapsed.

About the last paragraph he certainly means the Ouya, either that or Gabe
showed him an actual SteamBox.

