Marc Andreessen

Andreessen Horowitz · Netscape · b. 1971

Born July 9, 1971

Software engineer, entrepreneur, and investor. Marc Andreessen (born 1971 in Cedar Falls, Iowa) co-created Mosaic, the first widely used web browser, while a student at the University of Illinois. In 1994 he co-founded Netscape with Jim Clark, taking the company public in 1995 and selling it to AOL for $4.2 billion in 1999. He later co-founded Loudcloud and Opsware with Ben Horowitz, and in 2009 the two founded the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which backed Airbnb, Facebook, Instagram, and many others. He is one of the most cited public thinkers on technology and market strategy.

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Which books are linked to Marc Andreessen?

These are examples from the documented shelf. Each label describes the connection; a book on the shelf is not always a recommendation.

Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts by Annie Duke — Publisher endorsement. Source
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz — Recommendation. Source
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters — Recommendation. Source

See the full shelf and source notes

Contents

Career highlights

1971Born 9 July in Cedar Falls, Iowa.
1993Earned a BS in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he co-created Mosaic.
1994Co-founded Netscape Communications with Jim Clark; Andreessen was one of about a dozen people Jim Clark approached, and the only one who said yes.
1995Netscape went public in August, a landmark IPO that helped ignite the internet boom.
1999AOL acquired Netscape for $4.2 billion.
1999Co-founded Loudcloud with Ben Horowitz, which became Opsware and was sold to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007.
2009Co-founded the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz with Ben Horowitz.
2011Published 'Software Is Eating the World' in the Wall Street Journal, one of the most influential essays of the era.

Lessons for founders

Market matters more than team or product. Andreessen's core thesis, developed in his Pmarca blog archive, is that in a great market the market pulls the product out of the startup, while in a terrible market even the best team and product fail. 'Markets that don't exist don't care how smart you are.'
The only thing that matters is getting to product/market fit. Andreessen argues that most startups fail not because they run out of money but because they never reach product/market fit. Everything else — hiring, fundraising, strategy — is secondary to finding the market where the product is pulled forward.
Don't plan your career; pursue opportunities. Andreessen's first rule of career planning is not to plan your career at all. Opportunities present themselves when you're in the right place at the right time, and they come and go quickly — those who jump on them shoot up like rockets, while those who pass do not.
Software is eating the world. Andreessen's famous thesis is that software is disruptive not just in tech but across every industry, and that companies which treat themselves as software companies win. The most important companies of the future will be built by software-eating incumbents' industries.
Startup greatness is an emotional rollercoaster. Andreessen describes startups as producing only two emotions — euphoria and terror — often at whiplash speed. Founders must be ready for the emotional whiplash and, crucially, not let the lows of a bad week define the outcome.
Be a quadruple threat. Andreessen argues that successful CEOs are never the best at any single thing — not the best product visionary, salesperson, or marketer — but are top 25% in several skills, and that combination is what qualifies them to run something important.
Learn how to sell. Andreessen means learning to convince people that something is in their best interest, even when they don't realize it up front. Selling is a core skill for every founder, not just the sales team.

On the Founders podcast

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High Growth Handbook

Elad Gil

Gil interviews Andreessen about what changes after product-market fit and how a growing company should adapt. This is participation in the book, rather than a claim that he recommended reading it. source ↗