An archive of the best articles from Marc Andreessen’s now defunct blog
Charlie Munger is an 80-something billionaire who cofounded top-tier law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson and is Warren Buffett’s long-time partner and Vice-Chairman at Berkshire Hathaway, one of the most successful companies of all time. Some people, including me, consider Mr. Munger to be an even more interesting thinker and writer than Mr. Buffett, and recently a group of Mr. Munger’s friends…
I’ve tried very hard to keep politics out of this blog—despite nearly overpowering impulses to the contrary—for two reasons: one, there’s no reason to alienate people who don’t share my political views, as wrong-headed as those people may clearly be; two, there’s no reason to expect my opinion on political issues should be any more valid than any other reader of what, these days, passes for the…
Several days ago, Gary Rivlin of the New York Times called me about a story he was writing about the brilliant Max Levchin of Paypal and Slide, and the general topic of serial entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. The story came out yesterday; below are the notes I prepared for my conversation with Gary. In a nutshell, Gary’s question to me was: what makes serial entrepreneurs tick? Why do people like…
[IMPORTANT WARNING: What follows is satire. I’m NOT being serious. Except for one paragraph at the very end. See if you can spot that one.] When I first started this blog four months ago, one of the first substantive posts I wrote was called “Bubbles on the brain”. In it, I attempted to use “logic” to explain the reasons we are most likely not in another dot com bubble. Since that time, talk of a…
When picking an industry to enter, my favorite rule of thumb is this: Pick an industry where the founders of the industry—the founders of the important companies in the industry—are still alive and actively involved. This is easy to figure out—just look at the CEO, chairman or chairwoman, and board of directors for the major companies in the industry. If the founders of the companies are currently…
[Please read my opening disclaimers. Note especially that these are only personal views; I am not trying to malign anyone else’s choice of career or education path. These are simply the things I would want to be told if I were entering college today.] This post discusses skills acquisition throughout your lifetime, including your formal education. So I will start with college and move on from…
In real life—as opposed to blogging—one of my least favorite things to do is give career planning advice. Most people who say they want career planning advice aren’t actually looking for advice—they just want validation of the path they have already chosen. Because of that, giving someone career planning advice is one of the surest ways to end up feeling like an a******. However, as with so many…
The first rule of career planning: Do not plan your career. The world is an incredibly complex place and everything is changing all the time. You can’t plan your career because you have no idea what’s going to happen in the future. You have no idea what industries you’ll enter, what companies you’ll work for, what roles you’ll have, where you’ll live, or what you will ultimately contribute to the…
[This is a guest post from my business partner Ben Horowitz, reacting to my recent post about hiring, managing, promoting, and firing executives. I have italicized the parts where he really tears into me for your added humor value.] While I enjoyed Marc’s post on hiring and firing executives, I think that he unfairly dissed micromanagement. Here’s why. Everyone knows that the hyper-controlling…
[Title with sincere apologies to Mitch Albom and his wonderful book.] One of the hottest of hot topics these days is the topic of Internet platforms, or platforms on the Internet. Web services APIs (application programming interfaces), web services protocols like REST and SOAP, the new Facebook platform, Amazon’s web services efforts including EC2 and S3, lots of new startups talking platform…