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

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 &#38; Steve Jobs.<p>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'.<p>I love it.<p>We need more people like that, in the world, willing to shake things up.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>The same thing applies to creating content and media.<p>How can I not take his advice?

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.

<i>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><p>I so hope he means OUYA!<p>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.

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

So can we go through list of companies that tried and failed in 1999 &#38; see if its feasible now?

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.

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

In 1999 most were doing the headless chicken over y2k<p>It's 2012 now, lets not go there.<p>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.<p>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.

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.

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).<p>Netscape/Loudscloud/Opsware ended their lives as pity acquisitions, and Ning never did get off the ground.<p>Hopefully this venture fund works out and doesn't blow up in 2016 or so.<p>But he is right on the money with this though:<p>&#62; <i>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.”</i><p>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.

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