Netscape's father, Marc Andreessen, shares ideas about startups, investment strategies, and the future.

PayPal godfather Peter Thiel is a predictable person both in terms of entrepreneurship and investment. He co-founded PayPal, became Facebook's first external investor, and invested in successful startups such as LinkedIn and Zynga. The idea of a "more reliable dropout" in Silicon Valley was unexpectedly announced last month in a class called "Computer Science 183: Start-up companies (Computer 183:startup)".

Thiel invites friends and famous investors and entrepreneurs to participate in the classroom and share their experiences with students. So far, Max Levchin, Stephen Cohen, Paul Graham, Roelof Botha (Sequoia), Reid Hoffman, and most recently Marc Andreessen have been involved in his class. (In Thiel class, a student named Blake Masters the lectures and dialogues and posted them on his blog, and interested friends can check in.) ）

For entrepreneurs, investors and technology enthusiasts, their presence is undoubtedly a major aspect. Marc Andreessen's lectures and dialogues were especially wonderful, and the Netscape father shared his insights into entrepreneurs and investors, and now extracts the highlights from the following (complete text):

If Zuckerberg is not only 20-somethings, will he be able to create Facebook?

This is good news for today's students and young entrepreneurs. They are not "catching up" with the tech bubble of the late 90, so they are very healthy psychologically. When Zuckerberg and I mentioned Netscape in a conversation, he asked me, "What does Netscape do?" "I was very surprised. He looked at me again and said, "Dude, I was in high school, so I didn't notice." "That's a good thing. Less than 30 of entrepreneurs in their 20 are lucky, but those who have experienced that disastrous bubble are less fortunate, and many have a psychological shadow.

The thinking behind the "software is devouring the world":

Silicon Valley software companies will eventually devour the world, and the companies we build in Silicon Valley will rule almost every industry. The core of these companies is software, they know how to develop software, they understand the economics of software, they take product development as their top priority, and that's why they succeed.

All this is reflected in Andreessen Horowitz's investment theory. We do not do clean technology or biotechnology, we only do software-based projects. It would be great if the software was the core of the company (and the company would collapse when the key research and development team were pulled out). The companies that will eventually dominate most industries are those that are the same as Facebook or Google in the management specifications and characteristics.

Do you have a different perspective as an investor and entrepreneur?

The biggest, almost philosophical, difference between the two is the choice of timing. For entrepreneurs, timing is a huge risk, and you have to innovate at the right time, and you'll lose prematurely. It's really dangerous because you're almost a one-time bet. If you fail because of the wrong timing, it is almost impossible to create the same company in five years. Jonathan Abrams created Friendster instead of Facebook.

The situation is very different for venture capital. To be evergreen, you have to have a portfolio. Idea is no longer a one-time bet, and if you keep an eye on it, even if the company you're investing in fails, it's a good idea. If someone wants to do the same thing after four years, it's likely to be a good investment. But most investors do not, bitten, shy, failed once, they are afraid, so it is important to systematically track errors.

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To tell you the truth, if you think you've done the idea of failing in the past 5-10 years, a good VC will open your arms. All you have to do is tell him it's time.

How to create a board of directors:

In general, you have to work hard to build a board that will help you. You have to avoid putting those crazy people in there. It's like getting married, and many people's marriages are not perfect. Board members may be very bad. One bias is that if something goes wrong with the company, it has to do something, but the "what" is often worse than the problem itself, and bad board members often don't see it.

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I've never seen a controversial board vote, and maybe everything else went wrong, but there was no controversial vote-the problem was dealt with (meaning the members compromised). They either destroy the company or you find another solution.

How does a start-up company build a team of founders?

Ideally, the founder of the team has a "product person" founder/ceo. Know sales to do sales, the product is not made by sales. But the companies that run poorly in software companies are selling orders for products that quickly become a consulting firm. But if the product person is in charge of the company, he/she can give orders. That's why investors are skeptical when it comes to companies that want to choose a CEO. The alternative CEO is unlikely to be a good product, and replacing jobs with PepsiCo's marketing chief is simply not going to work.

The importance of design:

Now even the designers are becoming CEO, see Airbnb know, their thinking about the whole company is based on design. The importance of design is on the rise. Apple's success comes not from their hardware, but from OS X and iOS, which are designed to be a layer above it. There is a lot of talk about how beautiful their hardware is because the media are not looking at the right place. The best designers are software, they have a very deep understanding of design and are not concerned with the beauty of the surface.

About CEO:

In the eyes of our Andreessen Horowitz company, the CEO's skills are learned. The CEOs of Microsoft, Google and Facebook are all very good, and these companies are created by these people. It can be said that the most important companies in the world are created and operated by people who have not been CEOs before, and they learn at work. VC is worried about this, because the risk will be greater, but also, the return will be much greater.

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Almost everyone in Silicon Valley has decided that managers are a bunch of idiots who are really useful and able to save the world by doing the right thing. This is not really appropriate. Management is extremely important, excellent management, coupled with the operation of the company's excellent product people, both the sum is the best company characteristics.