Marc Andreessen
Encyclopedia
Marc Andreessen is an American entrepreneur, investor, software engineer, and multi-millionaire best known as co-author of Mosaic
, the first widely-used web browser
, and co-founder of Netscape Communications Corporation. He founded and later sold the software company Opsware
to Hewlett-Packard
. He is also a co-founder of Ning, a company which provides a platform for social-networking websites. He sits on the board of directors of Facebook, eBay, and HP, among others. Andreessen is a frequent keynote speaker and guest at Silicon Valley
conferences. He is one of only six inductees in the World Wide Web Hall of Fame announced at the first international conference on the World Wide Web
in 1994.
, and raised in New Lisbon, Wisconsin
. He received his Bachelor's degree
in computer science
from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
. As an undergraduate, he interned one summer at IBM
in Austin
, Texas
, United States
. He also worked at the university's National Center for Supercomputing Applications
(NCSA), where he became familiar with Tim Berners-Lee
's open standards for the World Wide Web
. Andreessen and a full-time salaried co-worker Eric Bina
worked on creating a user-friendly browser with integrated graphics that would work on a wide range of computers. The resulting code was the Mosaic web browser.
After his graduation from the university in 1993, Andreessen moved to California
to work at Enterprise Integration Technologies. Andreessen then met with Jim Clark
, the recently departed founder of Silicon Graphics
. Clark believed that the Mosaic browser had great commercial possibilities and suggested starting an Internet software company. Soon Mosaic Communications Corporation was in business in Mountain View, California
, with Andreessen as cofounder and vice president of technology. The University of Illinois was unhappy with the company's use of the Mosaic name, so Mosaic Communications changed its name to Netscape Communications, and its flagship web browser was the Netscape Navigator
.
In the year between the formation of the company and its IPO, Andreessen engaged in extensive public outreach on behalf of his vision of the web browser's potential, something he had in fact done continuously since making the decision to distribute Mosaic for free via the Internet.
One of these events, hosted by Internet commercialization pioneer Ken McCarthy
, was captured on video and provides a unique look at the state of the web between the time Andreessen and his colleagues launched Mosaic and the time when web browsers and servers became mainstream commercial products. At the time of the recording, Andreessen was 23 years old.
Netscape's IPO
in 1995 propelled Andreessen into the public's imagination. Featured on the cover of Time and other publications, Andreessen became the poster-boy wunderkind
of the Internet bubble generation: young, twenty-something, high-tech, ambitious, and worth millions (or billions) of dollars practically overnight.
Netscape's success attracted the attention of Microsoft
, which recognized the web's potential and wanted to put itself at the forefront of the rising Internet revolution. Microsoft licensed the Mosaic source code from Spyglass, Inc., an offshoot of the University of Illinois, and turned it into Internet Explorer
. The resulting battle between the two companies became known as the Browser Wars
.
Netscape was acquired in 1999 for $4.2 billion by AOL, which made Andreessen its Chief Technology Officer
. The same year, he was named to the MIT
Technology Review
TR100
as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.
and changed its name to Opsware
in 2003, where Andreessen served as chairman. Opsware was purchased by Hewlett-Packard in September 2007 for approximately $1.6 billion.
Andreessen co-founded Ning and is an investor in social news website Digg
and several other early-stage technology startups, like Plazes
, Netvibes
, CastTV
and Twitter
. His latest project is the RockMelt
browser launched in 2010.
He serves on the board of Facebook
, eBay
, Kno
, Hewlett-Packard, Bump, TinyCo, and Mixed Media Labs. Before it went defunct, he was on the board of Open Media Network
, a combined Kontiki (VeriSign) client and media player, launched in 2005.
On July 5, 2009, Andreessen announced along with his longtime business partner Ben Horowitz
, the formation of their venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz
, aimed purely at investing in the best new entrepreneurs, products, and companies in the information technology industry. On September 1, 2009, an investor group including Andreessen Horowitz acquired a majority stake in Skype Limited. In 2010, an investor group including Andreessen Horowitz invested $46 million into Kno
, Inc., a digital education platform company.
.
Mosaic (web browser)
Mosaic is the web browser credited with popularizing the World Wide Web. It was also a client for earlier protocols such as FTP, NNTP, and gopher. Its clean, easily understood user interface, reliability, Windows port and simple installation all contributed to making it the application that opened...
, the first widely-used web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
, and co-founder of Netscape Communications Corporation. He founded and later sold the software company Opsware
Opsware
Opsware, Inc. was a software company based in Sunnyvale, California that offered products for server and network device provisioning, configuration, and management targeted toward enterprise customers...
to Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
. He is also a co-founder of Ning, a company which provides a platform for social-networking websites. He sits on the board of directors of Facebook, eBay, and HP, among others. Andreessen is a frequent keynote speaker and guest at Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
conferences. He is one of only six inductees in the World Wide Web Hall of Fame announced at the first international conference on the World Wide Web
World Wide Web Conference 1
The first World Wide Web Conference which was organized by Robert Cailliau was held at Geneva, Switzerland from May 25 to May 27 in 1994 and was hosted by CERN....
in 1994.
Early life and education
Andreessen was born in Cedar Falls, IowaCedar Falls, Iowa
Cedar Falls is a city in Black Hawk County, Iowa, United States, and it is home to one of Iowa's three public universities, the University of Northern Iowa. The population was 39,260 in the 2010 census, an increase from the 36,145 population in the 2000 census...
, and raised in New Lisbon, Wisconsin
New Lisbon, Wisconsin
New Lisbon is a city in Juneau County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 1,436 at the 2000 census.-Geography:New Lisbon is located at ....
. He received his Bachelor's degree
Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
in computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...
. As an undergraduate, he interned one summer at IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
in Austin
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. He also worked at the university's National Center for Supercomputing Applications
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications is an American state-federal partnership to develop and deploy national-scale cyberinfrastructure that advances science and engineering. NCSA operates as a unit of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign but it provides high-performance...
(NCSA), where he became familiar with Tim Berners-Lee
Tim Berners-Lee
Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, , also known as "TimBL", is a British computer scientist, MIT professor and the inventor of the World Wide Web...
's open standards for the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
. Andreessen and a full-time salaried co-worker Eric Bina
Eric Bina
Eric J. Bina is the co-creator of Mosaic and the co-founder of Netscape. In 1993, Bina along with Marc Andreessen authored the first version of Mosaic while working as a programmer at National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.Bina attended...
worked on creating a user-friendly browser with integrated graphics that would work on a wide range of computers. The resulting code was the Mosaic web browser.
Netscape
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
to work at Enterprise Integration Technologies. Andreessen then met with Jim Clark
James H. Clark
James H. Clark is an American entrepreneur and computer scientist. He founded several notable Silicon Valley technology companies, including Silicon Graphics, Inc., Netscape Communications Corporation, myCFO and Healtheon...
, the recently departed founder of Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark...
. Clark believed that the Mosaic browser had great commercial possibilities and suggested starting an Internet software company. Soon Mosaic Communications Corporation was in business in Mountain View, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, with Andreessen as cofounder and vice president of technology. The University of Illinois was unhappy with the company's use of the Mosaic name, so Mosaic Communications changed its name to Netscape Communications, and its flagship web browser was the Netscape Navigator
Netscape Navigator
Netscape Navigator was a proprietary web browser that was popular in the 1990s. It was the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corporation and the dominant web browser in terms of usage share, although by 2002 its usage had almost disappeared...
.
In the year between the formation of the company and its IPO, Andreessen engaged in extensive public outreach on behalf of his vision of the web browser's potential, something he had in fact done continuously since making the decision to distribute Mosaic for free via the Internet.
One of these events, hosted by Internet commercialization pioneer Ken McCarthy
Ken McCarthy
Ken McCarthy is an American activist, educator, entrepreneur and Internet commercialization pioneer.- Early life and education :Born in New Haven, Connecticut, McCarthy's father Francis W...
, was captured on video and provides a unique look at the state of the web between the time Andreessen and his colleagues launched Mosaic and the time when web browsers and servers became mainstream commercial products. At the time of the recording, Andreessen was 23 years old.
Netscape's IPO
Initial public offering
An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...
in 1995 propelled Andreessen into the public's imagination. Featured on the cover of Time and other publications, Andreessen became the poster-boy wunderkind
Child prodigy
A child prodigy is someone who, at an early age, masters one or more skills far beyond his or her level of maturity. One criterion for classifying prodigies is: a prodigy is a child, typically younger than 18 years old, who is performing at the level of a highly trained adult in a very demanding...
of the Internet bubble generation: young, twenty-something, high-tech, ambitious, and worth millions (or billions) of dollars practically overnight.
Netscape's success attracted the attention of Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, which recognized the web's potential and wanted to put itself at the forefront of the rising Internet revolution. Microsoft licensed the Mosaic source code from Spyglass, Inc., an offshoot of the University of Illinois, and turned it into Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
. The resulting battle between the two companies became known as the Browser Wars
Browser wars
Browser wars is a metaphorical term that refers to competitions for dominance in usage share in the web browser marketplace. The term is often used to denote two specific rivalries: the competition that saw Microsoft's Internet Explorer replace Netscape's Navigator as the dominant browser during...
.
Netscape was acquired in 1999 for $4.2 billion by AOL, which made Andreessen its Chief Technology Officer
Chief technical officer
A chief technology officer is an executive-level position in a company or other entity whose occupant is focused on scientific and technological issues within an organization....
. The same year, he was named to the MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
Technology Review
Technology Review
Technology Review is a magazine published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded in 1899 as "The Technology Review", and was re-launched without the "The" in its name on April 23, 1998 under then publisher R. Bruce Journey...
TR100
TR35
The TR35 is an annual list published by MIT Technology Review magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35.Some of the most famous winners of the award include Larry Page and Sergey Brin , Linus Torvalds , Jerry Yang , Jonathan Ive , Mark Zuckerberg...
as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.
Loudcloud
Andreessen left Netscape to form Loudcloud, a services-based Web hosting company that made an IPO in 2001. Loudcloud sold its hosting business to EDSElectronic Data Systems
HP Enterprise Services is the global business and technology services division of Hewlett Packard's HP Enterprise Business strategic business unit. It was formed by the combination of HP's legacy services consulting and outsourcing business and the integration of acquired Electronic Data Systems,...
and changed its name to Opsware
Opsware
Opsware, Inc. was a software company based in Sunnyvale, California that offered products for server and network device provisioning, configuration, and management targeted toward enterprise customers...
in 2003, where Andreessen served as chairman. Opsware was purchased by Hewlett-Packard in September 2007 for approximately $1.6 billion.
Current ventures
.Andreessen co-founded Ning and is an investor in social news website Digg
Digg
Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...
and several other early-stage technology startups, like Plazes
Plazes
Plazes AG is a Berlin, Germany based geosocial networking site. Plazes allows users to post their location and current activities and share this information with other Plazes users via computers or mobile telephones. On 23 June 2008, Nokia Corporation announced plans to acquire Plazes.-History...
, Netvibes
Netvibes
Netvibes is a personalized dashboard publishing platform for the Web including digital life management, widget distribution services and brand observation rooms.-History:The company was founded by Tariq Krim and Florent Frémont in 2005.-Technology:...
, CastTV
CastTV
CastTV is an Internet video search and aggregation company based in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 2006 by Edwin Ong and Alex Vikati...
and Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
. His latest project is the RockMelt
RockMelt
RockMelt is a free social media web browser developed by Tim Howes and Eric Vishria. The project is backed by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen....
browser launched in 2010.
He serves on the board of Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
, eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
, Kno
Kno
Kno, Inc. is a software company in Silicon Valley that sells into the education market. The company is working with major academic publishers including McGraw-Hill, John Wiley & Sons, Pearson, and Cengage Learning to make their textbooks available to Kno users.- History:Kno was founded in May of...
, Hewlett-Packard, Bump, TinyCo, and Mixed Media Labs. Before it went defunct, he was on the board of Open Media Network
Open Media Network
The Open Media Network was a P2PTV service and application which provided distribution of educational and public service programs. The network was founded in 2005 by Netscape pioneers Mike Homer and Marc Andreessen...
, a combined Kontiki (VeriSign) client and media player, launched in 2005.
On July 5, 2009, Andreessen announced along with his longtime business partner Ben Horowitz
Ben Horowitz
Ben Horowitz is a high technology entrepreneur and investor. He is best known for co-founding and running the enterprise software company Opsware. In July 2007, Horowitz sold Opsware to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in cash...
, the formation of their venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz
Andreessen Horowitz
Andreessen Horowitz is a venture capital firm founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company's headquarters is in Menlo Park, California.The venture capital fund was started in June 2009 with an initial capital of $300 million....
, aimed purely at investing in the best new entrepreneurs, products, and companies in the information technology industry. On September 1, 2009, an investor group including Andreessen Horowitz acquired a majority stake in Skype Limited. In 2010, an investor group including Andreessen Horowitz invested $46 million into Kno
Kno
Kno, Inc. is a software company in Silicon Valley that sells into the education market. The company is working with major academic publishers including McGraw-Hill, John Wiley & Sons, Pearson, and Cengage Learning to make their textbooks available to Kno users.- History:Kno was founded in May of...
, Inc., a digital education platform company.
Personal life
Andreessen married Laura Arrillaga in 2006. She is the founder of the Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund and the daughter of Silicon Valley real estate billionaire John ArrillagaJohn Arrillaga
John Arrillaga is an American businessman who made his money through real estate, and is one of the most prominent landowners in Silicon Valley....
.
External links
- pmarca, Andreesen's blog, launched June 2007
- Michael Moritz interviews Marc Andreesen et al. at TechCrunch40 conference video
- First Internet Marketing Conference, San Francisco, 1994 Video includes Andreesen discussing Mosaic. See also: Internet Marketing ConferenceInternet Marketing ConferenceThe Internet Marketing Conference, often abbreviated IMC, is an international conference concerning numerous aspects of e-business. The inaugural conference was held in Copenhagen 2000. It has since then been held in Stockholm, Las Vegas, Berlin, Vancouver, Montreal, Gothenburg and New York...
- Ning Social Network Creation service
- PBS mini-bio
- Biography of Marc Andreesen Ibiblio.com
- Opsware Inc On the record: Marc Andreessen Interview re: successor to Loudcloud. December 7, 2003. Retrieved 2007-04-15.
- Netscape pioneers launch free content network CNET News.com. John Borland, April 25, 2005. Accessed 2007-04-15.
- Open Source Conversations 2005-10-19 Interview with Marc Andreessen
- Interview with Marc Andersen on Charlie Rose
- MP3 / OGG EdTechLive.com audio interview with Marc on education, free and open source software, and social networking
- Under construction Website for Andreessen Horowitz