Andreessen Quotes & Sayings

Almost every dot-com idea from 1999 that failed will succeed. — Marc Andreessen

Qualified software engineers, managers, marketers and salespeople in Silicon Valley can rack up dozens of high-paying, high-upside job offers any time they want, while national unemployment and underemployment is sky high. — Marc Andreessen

Giving is a universal opportunity. Regardless of your age, profession, religion, income bracket, and background, you have the capacity to create change. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

Actively deciding to give to causes that move you deeply is far more fulfilling than the momentary gratification derived from signing a check and mailing it to a nonprofit about which you know little more than what's on the brochure they sent you. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

Entrepreneurs say in an economic boom it's actually hard to build a company because everybody's too excited and there is too much money funding too many marginal companies. — Marc Andreessen

An awful lot of successful technology companies ended up being in a slightly different market than they started out in. Microsoft started with programming tools, but came out with an operating system. Oracle started doing contracts for the CIA. AOL started out as an online video gaming network. — Marc Andreessen

When incomes and bonuses decrease, revenues falter, and businesses stumble, it's more important than ever to give - not necessarily more, but in a way that matters more. When incomes are down and wallets are stretched, the effectiveness of our giving is what really counts. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

No one should expect building a new high-growth, software-powered company in an established industry to be easy. It's brutally difficult. — Marc Andreessen

In short, software is eating the world. — Marc Andreessen

Once you understand that everybody's going to get connected, a lot of things follow from that. If everybody gets the Internet, they end up with a browser, so they look at web pages - but they can also leave comments, create web pages. They can even host their own server! So not only is everybody consuming, they can also produce. — Marc Andreessen

You are cruising along, and then technology changes. You have to adapt. — Marc Andreessen

Where I grew up, we had the three TV networks, maybe two radio stations, no cable TV. We still had a long-distance party line in our neighborhood, so you could listen to all your neighbors' phone calls. We had a very small public library, and the nearest bookstore was an hour away. — Marc Andreessen

If you're the village blacksmith and a model T comes along, you better become a mechanic. People's lives are better when they get news online versus having to wait for the morning paper. It's a lot more efficient, a lot more real time, a lot less waste. — Marc Andreessen

Religion is a complex and often contradictory force in our world. It fosters hope and comfort but also doubt and guilt. It creates both community and exclusion. It brings societies together around shared belief and tears them apart through war. However, what unites the faithful, whatever their religion, is the unshakeable force of generosity. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

Innovation doesn't come from the big company. It never has and never will. Innovation is something new that looks crazy at first glance. It comes from the 19-year-olds and the start-ups that no one's heard of. — Marc Andreessen

Practically everyone is going to have a general purpose computer in their pocket, it's so easy to underestimate that, that has got to be the really, really big one. — Marc Andreessen

Nokia and Research in Motion needed a modern operating system. They could have bought Palm or Android before Google did, but they didn't. Today, it's probably too late, and at the time they would have been criticized for overpaying, but as they say - shift happens. — Marc Andreessen

Today's leading real-world retailer, Wal-Mart, uses software to power its logistics and distribution capabilities, which it has used to crush its competition. — Marc Andreessen

All's fair in love, war and ride-sharing. — Marc Andreessen

In the next 10 years, I expect at least five billion people worldwide to own smartphones, giving every individual with such a phone instant access to the full power of the Internet, every moment of every day. — Marc Andreessen

The great companies get built by their founders — Marc Andreessen

Around '93, '94, the conventional wisdom about the Internet was that it was a toy for academics and researchers. So it was very, very underestimated for about two years. — Marc Andreessen

We worked personally with a lot of great VCs. They just work incredibly hard at supporting entrepreneurs and their companies. — Marc Andreessen

Newspapers with declining circulations can complain all they want about their readers and even say they have no taste. But you will still go out of business over time. A newspaper is not a public trust - it has a business model that either works or it doesn't. — Marc Andreessen

The good news is we had this idea of cloud computing. The bad news is we were 10 years too early. — Marc Andreessen

You only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror. And I find that lack of sleep enhances them both. — Marc Andreessen

People are so bad at driving cars that computers don't have to be that good to be much better. Any time you stand in line at the D.M.V. and look around, you're like, Oh, my God, I wish all these people were replaced by computer drivers. — Marc Andreessen

If I want to get work done, that's usually about 3 in the morning. — Marc Andreessen

Breakthrough ideas look crazy, nuts. It's hard to think this way - I see it in other people's body language, and I can feel it in my own, where I sometimes feel like I don't even care if it's going to work, I can't take more change. O.K., Google, O.K., Twitter - but Airbnb? People staying in each other's houses without there being a lot of axe murders? — Marc Andreessen

The smartphone revolution is under-hyped, more people have access to phones than access to running water. We've never had anything like this before since the beginning of the planet. — Marc Andreessen

My own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy. — Marc Andreessen

The multipurpose device will always fail. — Marc Andreessen

There is an enormous market demand for information. It just has to be fulfilled in a way that fits with the technology of our times. — Marc Andreessen

If there's been a crisis in a market, you don't tend to have a new crisis in that market until the people who went through the last crisis aren't in the system anymore. — Marc Andreessen

Our combination of great research universities, a pro-risk business culture, deep pools of innovation-seeking equity capital and reliable business and contract law is unprecedented and unparalleled in the world. — Marc Andreessen

Only two people have been on the cover of Time Magazine in bare feet. I'm one, the other is Gandhi. — Marc Andreessen

My mother taught me that to maximize your philanthropic potential, you need to constantly challenge your capabilities and put yourself in situations that are not always comfortable. Through her example, I discovered that there is no more beautiful way to live a life than to live a life of service. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

First of all, every new company today is being built in the face of massive economic headwinds, making the challenge far greater than it was in the relatively benign '90s. — Marc Andreessen

I love what the Valley does. I love company building. I love startups. I love technology companies. I love new technology. I love this process of invention. Being able to participate in that as a founder and a product creator, or as an investor or a board member, I just find that hugely satisfying. — Marc Andreessen

The word 'philanthropy' brings up an image of somebody who's had an illustrious career, has retired and is giving to highly established institutions that may or may not have ivy growing up their walls. I personally have felt the need to give philanthropy a reboot — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

It's an old - and true - cliche that VCs rarely actually say 'no' - more often they say 'maybe', or 'not right now', or 'my partners aren't sure', or 'that's interesting, let me think about it' — Marc Andreessen

Health care and education, in my view, are next up for fundamental software-based transformation. — Marc Andreessen

I have yet to take capital losses on any company. Then again, it's still early. — Marc Andreessen

Amazon drove Borders out of business, and the vast majority of Borders employees are not qualified to work at Amazon. That's an actual, full-on problem. But should Amazon have been prevented from doing that? In my view, no. — Marc Andreessen

Any new technology tends to go through a 25-year adoption cycle. — Marc Andreessen

Online, you can become much more than a reactive donor - you can become a proactive, strategic, collaborative philanthropist, improving your giving every day by tapping into the wealth of philanthropic resources available at the tap of a keyboard or the click of a mouse. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

Great CEOs are not just born with shiny hair and a tie. — Marc Andreessen

As technology breaks down the physical barriers of college campuses, the extraordinary intellectual capital of the educator community is becoming available to anyone committed to learning - regardless of age, income or location. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

Rule 1: All rules can be broken. Many (ex-legal and ethical) should be. Most people won't. — Marc Andreessen

Innovation accelerates and compounds. Each point in front of you is bigger than anything that ever happened. — Marc Andreessen

The transfer is guaranteed to be safe and secure, everyone knows that the transfer has taken place, and nobody can challenge the legitimacy of the transfer. The consequences of this breakthrough are hard to overstate, — Marc Andreessen

I want to empower and educate and inspire individuals who are giving to give in a way that is more meaningful. The more meaningful our giving is, the more giving we will do. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

There's a new generation of entrepreneurs in the Valley who have arrived since 2000, after the dotcom bust. They're completely fearless. — Marc Andreessen

If the Net becomes the center of the universe, which is what seems to be happening, then the dizzying array of machines that will be plugged into it will virtually guarantee that the specifics of which chip and which operating system you've got will be irrelevant. — Marc Andreessen

In the startup world, you're either a genius or an idiot. You're never just an ordinary guy trying to get through the day. — Marc Andreessen

Of course, giving is deeply emotional. But supplementing emotion with research makes it more likely that a gift can have a bigger impact. It's like any investment. After all, you wouldn't put funds into stocks or bonds without understanding the potential return. Why wouldn't you do the same when investing in society? — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

The transformation of Apple is probably the biggest tech story of the last 15 years. — Marc Andreessen

PCs don't suck. They're inadequate. — Marc Andreessen

Big breakthrough ideas often seem nuts the first time you see them. — Marc Andreessen

And once you get instantaneous communication with everybody, you have economic activity that's far more advanced, far more liquid, far more distributed than ever before. — Marc Andreessen

With lower start-up costs and a vastly expanded market for online services, the result is a global economy that for the first time will be fully digitally wired-the dream of every cyber-visionary of the early 1990s, finally delivered, a full generation later. — Marc Andreessen

The fact that 35 percent of all American giving went to religious organizations in 2010 reflects how closely bound many of us are with our place of worship. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

When you give as a family, not only are you sharing the happiness that giving brings you by watching it translate into positive change, but you are also transmitting your giving values to your children by engaging them in the giving process itself. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

As technology changes the way we communicate, connect, create, consume and innovate, it is democratizing access to opportunity. Education is no exception. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

I know where I'm putting my money. — Marc Andreessen

I hope to someday live in a world where there are lots more Silicon Valleys. — Marc Andreessen

Being innovative in your philanthropy allows you to stride forward in your giving journey; you can marry your mind and heart to turn charity into lasting impact; and you can become more ambitious in your giving. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

Despite Marc Andreessen's and Peter Thiel's belief that the outsize gains of tech billionaires are the result of a genius entrepreneur culture, inequality at this scale is a choice - the result of the laws and taxes that we as a society choose to establish. — Jonathan Taplin

Nonprofits are the intermediaries between generosity and social change. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

TV and the press have always functioned according to the same sets of rules and technical standards. But the Internet is based on software. And anybody can write a new piece of software on the Internet that years later a billion people are using. — Marc Andreessen

In my view, a philanthropist is anyone who gives anything - time, money, experience, skills or networks - in any amount, to create a better world. This is not how we once thought about philanthropy. The word used to conjure up something rather passive - sitting down and writing checks. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

My father has been to me a paragon of what actualizing philanthropic potential can be. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

It's hard to do that with people who think emotionally. A lot of people think in terms of people, emotions, and feelings. That's more complicated. Engineering mentality makes it, in theory, a little easier. — Marc Andreessen

One of the advantages of moving quickly is if you do something wrong you can change it. What technologies tend to do is they tend to make a lot of mistakes ... but then we go back and aggressively attack those mistakes - and fix them. And you usually recover pretty quickly. — Marc Andreessen

'Giving 2.0' frames giving as a learning experience and encourages everyone to make giving a part of your year-round life. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

My father taught me many important giving lessons, but two stand out. First, always give as much as you possibly can. And second, give equally from among your resources - your time, your mind and your capital. These are principles I live by. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

By making all my materials freely available through 'Giving 2.0' ProjectU, I am on a mission to extend philanthropy education to colleges globally and far beyond campus walls. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

In high school, I actually thought I was going to have to learn Japanese to work in technology. My big feeling was I just missed it, I missed the whole thing. It had happened in the '80s, and I got here too late. But then, I'm maybe the most optimistic person I know. I mean, I'm incredibly optimistic. — Marc Andreessen

China is very entrepreneurial but has no rule of law. Europe has rule of law but isn't entrepreneurial. Combine rule of law, entrepreneurialism and a generally pro-business policy, and you have Apple. — Marc Andreessen

It was a joke, okay? If we thought it would actually be used, we wouldn't have written it! — Marc Andreessen

Too often we're happy to receive thanks from the nonprofits we fund, accepting gratitude instead of feedback or performance measurements. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

I love the 'Daily Show,' and I think Jon Stewart is hysterical. But literally, the answer to every single problem is, 'Congress should pass a new law.' It's this unbelievably optimistic view of, 'We can pass a law, and then everybody will get along.' — Marc Andreessen

The gulf between what the press and many regular people believe Bitcoin is, and what a growing critical mass of technologists believe Bitcoin is, remains enormous. — Marc Andreessen

More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services - from movies to agriculture to national defense. — Marc Andreessen

The 2 hardest things you'll have to do when running a company are recruiting and talking people out of leaving. — Marc Andreessen

Suggest your children try tithing - giving 10 percent of their allowance to a charity every month. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

There will be certain points of time when everything collides together and reaches critical mass around a new concept or a new thing that ends up being hugely relevant to a high percentage of people or businesses. But it's really really hard to predict those. I don't believe anyone can. — Marc Andreessen

We are single-mindedly focused on partnering with the best innovators pursuing the biggest markets. — Marc Andreessen

'Giving 2.0' is about making your giving matter more to the people we all hope to help, and it's about making your giving matter more to you. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

'Giving 2.0' was born of my desire to redefine and democratize philanthropy. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

Proactive giving is what you do when you've found your passion. It expresses your values, interests and concerns. It engages not just your dollars, but also your mind, time, skills and networks - the philanthropic equivalent of leaning in, rather than leaning back. Most importantly, proactive giving is something you want to do. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

Historically, philanthropy has been something that you do when you turn 65, and you are retired, and you have spent your life accumulating your financial resources, and now you finally have time to do it. But because of the Internet revolution, that in turn revolutionized economic growth and wealth generation. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

A lot of things you want to do as part of daily life can now be done over the Internet. — Marc Andreessen

Philanthropic dollars are precious resources, so it's our responsibility to consider how we use them carefully. Yet few of us spend enough time doing so. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

I think 2012 is the year when consumers all around the world start saying no to feature phones and start saying yes to smartphones. — Marc Andreessen

I'm really excited about anything that is able to address the really big markets, so anything that's universally appealing. — Marc Andreessen

When I talk to entrepreneurs today, I feel like the grandfather who was in the Civil War. — Marc Andreessen

In 2000, when my partner Ben Horowitz was CEO of the first cloud computing company, Loudcloud, the cost of a customer running a basic Internet application was approximately $150,000 a month. — Marc Andreessen

If you think you can execute a previously failed idea, you just have to be able to show that now is the time. — Marc Andreessen

My goal is not to fail fast. My goal is to succeed over the long run. They are not the same thing. — Marc Andreessen