Marc Andreessen, a 28-year Silicon Valley veteran is an entrepreneur, investor, and software engineer. Most notably, he is one of the creators of early web browser Mosaic. He also launched Netscape, and early cloud and SaaS company Opsware.
At this unique moment where technology and its future can look unclear in terms of its trajectory, Andreessen sat for a new interview with McKinsey to discuss current tech trends like artificial intelligence, crypto, and Web3, and how these technologies develop and disrupt businesses.
Here are some excerpts from the interview.
On transitional tech moments:
“At any given time in the tech industry, there are two primary modes.
One is what we call search mode. You are wandering around through unfamiliar territory, and you’re searching for new hills to climb. You’re searching for new technologies that will work and that will capture the imagination. People will become interested, and new markets will open up.
The second is hill-climbing mode, which is basically when you exploit the new opportunity or market. As you climb the hill, you refine the products and proliferate them to a mass market.”
On tech talent:
“I would break “smart people” into two sets. The ones we track primarily are engineers, right? And the nature of engineers, in any given field, is that they just go to work and write software and build gizmos. Even at moments when lots of people are disillusioned about technology, the engineers just keep showing up for work. They’re engineers, it’s what they do, right? So whatever the smart engineers work on is going to get better. It may or may not be commercially successful, but it is going to improve.”
“The other set of people we focus on are the really good entrepreneurs. And yes, entrepreneurs respond to fads like anybody else. But when really good entrepreneurs pair with really good engineers, they start companies, they build products, and they tend to make what they’re working on a lot better.”
On web3 and cryptocurrency:
“I think this is a foundational technology change, a new architecture for building an entirely new generation of computing systems. We have become convinced that Web3/blockchain/crypto is foundational. It’s a big hill. It’s as foundational an architecture shift as the ones from mainframes to PCs, from PCs to web, from web to mobile, or from traditional software to AI. It’s a fundamental shift and building this out is a 25- to 30-year process.”
On what he’s tell companies about digital transformation:
“Find the smartest technologist in the company and make them CEO.
I’ve had these conversations a thousand times with companies, with the CEO, the board of directors. They’re not technologists, and I do my thing. I like people, and I like talking about this stuff. I walk them through the basics.
And I can always tell if there’s a real technologist in the room. The real technologist is not sitting at the table. They’re sitting against the wall. They’re never in the main group, and they sit there and nod their head. They’re thinking, “Finally, somebody is showing up and actually saying this to these people. Maybe they’ll finally get it.””
Read the full interview transcript here.
