For those that don't know what is going on, here is the backstory:<p>Carl Icahn has recently bought a bunch of ebay stock. He has claimed the company is mismanaged. He has also personally attacked Marc Andreesen. Here is the accusation from Ichan:<p>1) Marc Andreesen was/is on ebay's board.<p>2) While on ebay's board, Marc bought most of Skype from eBay.<p>3) He flipped Skype to Microsoft in less than 2 years, earning himself a multi-billion dollar profit.<p>Carl Icahn is running Marc Andreesen name through the mud. The basic accusation is that if Marc knew Skype was so valuable as the smart phone wars were heating up, he had an obligation as a board member to give ebay better advice on the divesture.<p>Now Marc is fighting back.<p>This is a comic schoolboy fight among billionaires.<p>Edit: After a bit of fact checking, it looks like A16Z only invested $50M in the skype deal. Their fund at the time was around $300M. His gain was on the order of $150 million, not billions. A16Z only had around 2% of skype, and ebay retained 35%.
In my view, after his humiliation by Apple's board, Carl Icahn feels his power (and by proxy the power of wall street) slowly and surely being stripped away by tech. This is at the root of his obsession with pmarca, who famously claimed that "software is eating the world."<p>The world that's being eaten is the world of Icahn and wall street financiers like him. The tech industry has its own source of finance (namely angels, vcs, y-combinator etc .. people like pmarca). Icahn's recent attention seeking is a symptom of the despair he feels at no longer being needed.<p>Good riddance, in my opinion.
Financiers like Icahn are motivated by short term profits above all else. Building a company takes people with a long term vision. The two are often not compatible. Having a leech trying to bleed out every cent as soon as it's made is not generally a good thing unless your company throws off wads of unneeded cash like nobody's business.
It's kind of absurd how closely Carl Icahn's mirrors that of the story of Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's movie <i>Wall Street</i>. What Icahn did to TWA is pretty much exactly what Gekko did (or planned to do) to Bluestar Airlines in that film. Longer period of time - but in principle, very similar.
I like to see them swinging back at Icahn.<p>He uses wildly over-dramatic statements ('ebay is the worst run company ever') to try to force boards to do things that are specifically in his short term interests. He has absolutely no concern for the long-term well being of a company. After he gets his stock pop, he liquidates and is gone. Icahn's entire strategy operates strictly on the basis of greenmailing the leadership of a company into discharging cash into his lap. He will say anything he has to in order to generate that outcome.
Andreeson's defense seems to be that Icahn has had as many conflicts of interest and selfish motives on boards as he has, if not more.<p>I'm not sure that's a good defense: "He's killed twice as many people as I have, and he's been at it longer, too!"<p>When people so alike bicker like this in movies, they're usually about a minute away from kissing.
Can someone explain to me the significance of the animosity between Carl Icahn and pmarca? There are half a dozen posts on pmarca's blog discussing how Icahn is making claims against Andreessen. I understand these claims, but I don't understand their significance.<p>I deeply respect pmarca but I can imagine that he, like any high visibility person, has many detractors. What power does Carl Icahn have that warrants such a strong response?
I submitted this under the permalink URL earlier in the day: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7421591" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7421591</a><p>Can any mods delete my submission and update this URL to that URL? It seems illadvised to have this item pointed at pmarca's blog homepage vs. the item we're discussing.
If everyone was like Icahn, we'd already be through a few revolutions. He likes to engineer market events just ask Apple. Like this article said, he does this to the detriment of everyone around and destroys value. Marc creates value and companies and Icahn from what I have seen previous and here, likes to create money for himself out of destroying that value. When the world says don't, he says Icahn.
With each volley that Icahn and Andreessen fire back and forth, I'm left more humbled by how incredibly smart these two men are. I feel like I'm watching master communicators slug it out and I'm learning an incredible amount from the action.
What is it with pmarca? As a subscriber of his blog, he's been lambasting Carl Icahn for awhile now. Don't get me wrong! I hate Carl Icahn, but pmarca's critique is hard to get and overobsessive.
Marc's paying for too much attention to Icahn. He should have simply issued a short statement refuting Icahn's allegations and laying out the facts, and then ignored him, like one would a crazy homeless guy ranting on the street.<p>Instead, it's in danger of turning into a mud-slinging contest.
The article left me with lots ofdoubt... Take this sequence of events:<p>Bought 20% of company.<p>made it private.<p>Sold London route.<p>So, how can someone with 20% make a company private? And how can someone having his shares bought back after company went private still command it to sell anything?<p>Was he ceo all along?
The sketchiest thing about Andreeson is that he sits on the board of directors for HP... and at no point has he told investors that it's a rudderless shell of it's former self with almost no hope.
I love Marc and understand he's upset about the accusations, but it's time to move on. Nobody who knows anything about Marc takes them seriously. I'm obviously not privy to what goes on in eBay's boardroom, but the notion of Marc being some svengali forcing them to cede him 100s of millions is blatantly ludicrous, not to mention insulting to the other board members. If I were Marc (and it's probably much easier to say this since I'm not) I'd just ignore.
I kind of find fault with pmarca recusing himself from the eBay board during the skype deal in spite of his conflict of interest, as he's clearly 100x more intelligent than anyone else on the eBay board. I'd rather have a smart guy who has particular knowledge advocating for my interests, even if he has some biases which he discloses, rather than some former CEOs of eBay (not exactly winners there) or some big dumb fund people, which is what you're left with otherwise.
Is there any positive perspective on this guy too? In this interview (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTIp9ebXAh0" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTIp9ebXAh0</a>) he kind of makes sense with `restructure to concentrate on shareholder value` and `restructure for short term or sure profits` line of thinking...
Dear Marc:<p>Who gives a rats ass what Carl Icahn thinks? Stop paying so much damn attention to him.<p>You're leaving me the impression that what he is saying is actually applicable. If it is, get to the point. Otherwise, move on....this story is getting old.