Sign up FAST! Login

Eight things Marc Andreessen said to Quartz that made us sit up and listen


Stashed in: Facebook!, Marc Andreessen, Teh Internets, Airbnb, Kleiner Perkins, internet, Virtual Reality!, FB, Active Users, airbnb, Hive Mind, @marcandreessen, the new

To save this post, select a stash from drop-down menu or type in a new one:

From December 2012:

6. This mobile internet thing? Bigger than anyone understands

“We’ve never had the ability in our industry to reach five billion people with a computer and now we have the ability to do that.” Two billion Android handsets will be activated in the next year, and the scale of global computing is going to open up huge opportunities, not just in the tech business, but for people to push back against repressive governments and price-gouging merchants. “The smartphone revolution is really hitting its stride now,” Andreessen says.

Kind of an awesome thought -- 5 billion people connected to the global Hive Mind.

and the interconnectedness of all things becomes even stronger...

This is also brilliant:

5. Don’t expect Facebook to justify its IPO price

“I don’t think companies have to justify their stock prices.” Andreessen says if Facebook returns to its IPO price,  it won’t be because it made better arguments about why investors should purchase its equity.  “I come from the school of [Silicon Valley venture capitalist and Kleiner Perkins partner] John Doerr on this one. If Netscape stock went up or down 10% one day, I said to John, why did our stock do that? And he said, ‘Oh, there were more buyers than sellers.’” (Andreessen is on Facebook’s board.)

8. Frying your brain is a fair price to pay for new technology

“If Google Glass works—I want the contact lens version as soon as I can possibly get it—I don’t care if it’s a microwave beam powering the thing that gives me eye cancer, I’ll take it.” Responding to a question about the next big hardware platform, Andreessen said that he thought there were about 20 years of innovation in apps left in smartphones and tablets. But he’s excited about Google’s augmented-reality platform, Project Glass.

Currently, Google Glass consists of a display perched on an eyeglasses frame, but eventually that display could be embedded in contact lenses (someone has already built an early screen-on-a-lens prototype). Powering them could be a problem, however—where do you put the battery?—so one solution could be to beam microwaves at the lenses. Continuous exposure to that level of microwave radiation might be bad for you, however, but Andreessen doesn’t care. “I don’t care if you can flash-fry an egg in between the battery and the eye, I can’t wait.”

7. Forget hotels. The whole property market is turning upside down

“AirBnB is gonna eat real estate.” Not just hotels, not just vacation rentals, not just sublets: Andreessen predicts that the online rental platform will do to real estate what eBay and other online sellers did for goods. And then it will eat the travel industry’s lunch too. (Caveat: He’s an investor).

I'm still waiting for Airbnb to put price pressure on the Bay Area rental rates.

Because they frankly are ridiculous.

you mean vacation rental rates are too high or regular housing rentals?

Regular housing rentals. It's crazy in Silicon Valley now.

You May Also Like: