Marc Andreessen Says Now's the Time to Build Companies Like It's 1999

http://allthingsd.com/20120716/marc-andreessen-says-nows-the-time-to-build-companies-like-its-1999/

by azazo • 14 years ago

74 35 14 years ago

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.

samstave2• 14 years ago

I'll take that bet.

Here is hoping you're correct.

gruuuuuuuu• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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.

unimpressive• 14 years ago

I just want to see if they can even ship.

Let alone survive in the long term.

Let alone build a sustainable software ecosystem.

Ultimately I predict a spectacular failure, but I would love to be wrong on this.

chimi• 14 years ago

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

brc• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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.

Zenst• 14 years ago

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.

nerd_in_rage• 14 years ago

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

samstave2• 14 years ago

A terrorist attack?

kintamanimatt• 14 years ago

I hope not. Every time one of those happens a gaggle of retarded politicians take their pants off, put them on their head and start running around enacting egregious laws.

The aftermath is much worse than the event.

scottmagdalein• 14 years ago

A weasel? I'm confused.

ehsanu1• 14 years ago

Bubble.

wilfra• 14 years ago

This is what I assumed the headline meant. Like he was telling us all to brace for the inevitable crash and try to be Amazon instead of Pets.com.

That would be more accurate advice in the present climate. imo.

danielpal• 14 years ago

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.

kayman• 14 years ago

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

jayzee• 14 years ago

That's what we are up to: Chemdex~=Quartzy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemdex.com

dangrossman• 14 years ago

Sure, here's the list: http://www.amazon.com/Fd-Companies-Spectacular-Dot-Com-Flame...

Used copies start at a penny.

netcan• 14 years ago

Im sure you meant that in a sarcastic way, but that might not be a bad idea. A lot of the dotcom bombs were not bad ideas in a universal sense. The technology, culture, adoption & know-how just wasn't there in 1999 and wasn't going to be there by 2000.

A lot of people are still ordering physical products online for the first time. A lot of offices paying for a webapp for the first time. In a lot of senses 2012 is what 1999 expected 2002 to be.

If you grab a list of 100 failed 1999 companies, you have 100 things that people thought were going to be big in 2002. Worth exploring if you're looking for ideas.

capkutay• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

The current suffix is 'cloud'.

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

raheemm• 14 years ago

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.

JVIDEL• 14 years ago

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.

marcamillion3• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

> 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.

marcamillion3• 14 years ago

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.

confluence2• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

I'm sure he isn't going hungry!

confluence2• 14 years ago

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).

dkrich• 14 years ago

Eh, I think I'll save my sympathy for somebody else. I don't really care if his fund implodes. He's worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Frankly I don't really think his predictions have much historic validity. Obviously I give him all the credit in the world for his developments of Mosaic and Netscape but let's not confuse past successes with predictive ability. When I think of tech visionaries, Marc Andreesen doesn't really spring to mind.

gaius• 14 years ago

You know, there was once a time when things were manufactured in Japan because it was cheap. But the Japanese showed they could get smart quicker than the US could get cheaper, and that's why Japanese cars, cameras, watches, etc dominate the US market now. Robotics didn't help... The Japanese got better than the US at that too.

The ONLY thing that will stop China eating the USs lunch will be if its political class decide its merchant class are getting too powerful (as happened in 1425, when owning a ship with more than one mast was made a capital crime).

Marc Andreessen Says Now's the Time to Build Companies Like It's 1999

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