7 ms·

Marc Andreessen “tried really hard not to invent anything new”

oscar-the-horse 14y ago
Here's one of the quotes from the video (Marc): "We tried really hard not to invent anything new. And we also tried not to solve any hard problems. Which makes it a lot easier to actually get something done"
gleb 14y ago
Note that he is talking about NCSA Mosaic, not Netscape
ippisl 14y ago
"we borrowed protocols, formats and even code from the world wide web project ... our goal:easy to use, fun graphical front end" It's a classic university commercialization effort:take ip from university for some important problem, integrate it together and give it a commercial appeal, and sell. But it's not as easy as writing some crud site.
stcredzero 14y ago
Be real with yourself: Cleverness is a finite resource, even yours. Leverage it in the most efficient way possible. (So alpha-geek pissing matches are clearly a waste. Everything should be focused towards furthering your company's goals while avoiding bugs and making refactoring easier.)
- svdad 14y ago
  God I wish that attitude were more common.
- dman 14y ago
  It takes all kinds. The world would be a duller place if all of us were chasing current goals.
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    Note: I never said "current." 2nd and 3rd order goals are fine and sometimes require cleverness.
    - dman 14y ago
      Alpha geek matches are often about people arriving at problems that are not widely realised.
      - stcredzero 14y ago
        We are vehemently agreeing here, seemingly in part to defend the good name of alpha geeks everywhere. Alpha-geek behavior isn't going to go away. It's such a potent force, a company better damned well harness it for its own good. Otherwise, it's like a rocket without a dependable guidance system. To neglect this is to court disaster. (Even better, an Alpha Geek better damned well harness it for her/his own enlightened self interest, or I won't work with them.) (Or, did you just want me to say that Alpha Geeks are all just like saints? They often wish they were kensei.)
        dman 14y ago
        I think we are in agreement - the part about good companies finding a way to tap alpha geek energy rings very true.
- 6ren 14y ago
  Similar: Don't waste working memory.
_delirium 14y ago
Seems pretty standard for a commercializer. The goal is to take some existing research funded by someone else (out of a university usually, though sometimes a corporate lab or government lab) and turn it into a product with the minimum additional modifications.
DivisibleByZero 14y ago
There’s an ongoing debate about whether startups should focus on harder problems. Is there a really a debate or am I missing something? This is honestly the first thing I have seen supporting not solving a problem. Really I think there is a place for both. He mentions avoiding the problem of search, which happened to be the foundation of a particularly successful company.
- cbsmith 14y ago
  > Really I think there is a place for both. There is, but the sense is that things have shifted out of proportion.
confluence 14y ago
Let me just ask - When has anyone ever actually invented anything totally new? The telephone? It was referred to as the "speaking telegraph" (telegraph + speakers). The car? Horseless carriage (engine + wheels + steering + brakes) The plane? Glider + engine. The Wright brothers invented powered flight - not flight. The difficulty was getting the weight to lift ratio high enough with a primitive heavy engine on board. Gliders already existed - you just couldn't go anywhere with them! You can't just jump off a cliff and glide to China. Google? A more advanced MITS algorithm + inktomi's commodity cluster map-reduce architecture + inktomi's PPC. Indeed, had inktomi doubled down on search instead of their CDN, we might well be talking about inktomi and not Google. General and Special Relativity? Nope - http://www.quora.com/If-Albert-Einstein-had-never-existed-at-all-in-the-world-would-relativity-theory-have-been-found-and-proposed-by-others-by-now http://www.quora.com/If-Albert-Einstein-had-never-existed-at.... There are no really new ideas out there - merely combinations old ones that "hang in the air". There are no new ideas - merely old ones combined in unique ways. Everything is a remix (https://vimeo.com/14912890 https://vimeo.com/14912890).
- Retric 14y ago
  The first battery is in no way a simple composition of existing ideas. Inventing a useful and novel idea is both hard and rare. The most extreme example might just be the fact Australia had 'modern' humans for 40,000 years without inventing the bow and arrow even though they had spears. And the rest of the world spent those 40,000 years without inventing the returning boomerang even though 'hunting' sticks where found in Europe well over 10,000 years ago.
  - Dn_Ab 14y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_battery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_battery suggests that basic knowledge and early experimentation with the known concept of electricity and a disagreement about whether a dead frog's leg can generate electricity inspired the battery. Volta notes those whose work he relied on.
    - 14y ago
paulsutter 14y ago
It's really hard to build a company. It's really admirable to build a successful tech company, no matter how lofty or straightforward the project. The Instagram guys are also heroes to me. Zip2, Elon's first company, didn't invent anything new or solve any hard problems either (it started out as an online yellow pages). But it was really important that Elon learned from that process. And I know that he enjoyed it, I remember meeting with him when they were 10 guys in one room. And Zip2 was worth $300M to Altavista, which is how Elon paid for the Maclaren mentioned in the recent video. I'm also glad that Peter Thiel and Max Levchin and others have started to create social pressure for us to think about how to do big things that really benefit society. And maybe we only need to feel that pressure after we've done one or two successful things. As individuals it's also ok to ignore it and say hey I really enjoy building companies and don't need to change the world in a huge way.
- confluence 14y ago
  Did Elon get screwed by the VCs during the formation and sale of Zip2? Apparently his brother, their friend and Elon got diluted out during later funding rounds. They squeezed his take down to a "measly" $20 million. At least that's what I've read (it's also probably the reason he started all over again with X.com which eventually morphed into PayPal).
pmboyd 14y ago
Netscape no longer exists as a company (or meaningful subdivision of AOL) so that might not have been the best strategy. Copying got them ahead quickly but didn't keep them there.
- adestefan 14y ago
  Poor business decisions and copying by a competitor is what killed Netscape.
mdonahoe 14y ago
My favorite part of the video is when he advanced the slide, and you realize you are looking at an overhead project with printed transparency instead of PowerPoint. 1994, simpler times.

Here's one of the quotes from the video (Marc): "We tried really hard not to invent anything new. And we also tried not to solve any hard problems. Which makes it a lot easier to actually get something done"

gleb 14y ago

Note that he is talking about NCSA Mosaic, not Netscape

ippisl 14y ago

"we borrowed protocols, formats and even code from the world wide web project ... our goal:easy to use, fun graphical front end" It's a classic university commercialization effort:take ip from university for some important problem, integrate it together and give it a commercial appeal, and sell. But it's not as easy as writing some crud site.

stcredzero 14y ago

Be real with yourself: Cleverness is a finite resource, even yours. Leverage it in the most efficient way possible. (So alpha-geek pissing matches are clearly a waste. Everything should be focused towards furthering your company's goals while avoiding bugs and making refactoring easier.)

svdad 14y ago
God I wish that attitude were more common.
dman 14y ago
It takes all kinds. The world would be a duller place if all of us were chasing current goals.
- stcredzero 14y ago
  Note: I never said "current." 2nd and 3rd order goals are fine and sometimes require cleverness.
  - dman 14y ago
    Alpha geek matches are often about people arriving at problems that are not widely realised.
    - stcredzero 14y ago
      We are vehemently agreeing here, seemingly in part to defend the good name of alpha geeks everywhere. Alpha-geek behavior isn't going to go away. It's such a potent force, a company better damned well harness it for its own good. Otherwise, it's like a rocket without a dependable guidance system. To neglect this is to court disaster. (Even better, an Alpha Geek better damned well harness it for her/his own enlightened self interest, or I won't work with them.) (Or, did you just want me to say that Alpha Geeks are all just like saints? They often wish they were kensei.)
      - dman 14y ago
        I think we are in agreement - the part about good companies finding a way to tap alpha geek energy rings very true.
6ren 14y ago
Similar: Don't waste working memory.

_delirium 14y ago

Seems pretty standard for a commercializer. The goal is to take some existing research funded by someone else (out of a university usually, though sometimes a corporate lab or government lab) and turn it into a product with the minimum additional modifications.

DivisibleByZero 14y ago

There’s an ongoing debate about whether startups should focus on harder problems. Is there a really a debate or am I missing something? This is honestly the first thing I have seen supporting not solving a problem. Really I think there is a place for both. He mentions avoiding the problem of search, which happened to be the foundation of a particularly successful company.

cbsmith 14y ago
> Really I think there is a place for both. There is, but the sense is that things have shifted out of proportion.

confluence 14y ago

Let me just ask - When has anyone ever actually invented anything totally new? The telephone? It was referred to as the "speaking telegraph" (telegraph + speakers). The car? Horseless carriage (engine + wheels + steering + brakes) The plane? Glider + engine. The Wright brothers invented powered flight - not flight. The difficulty was getting the weight to lift ratio high enough with a primitive heavy engine on board. Gliders already existed - you just couldn't go anywhere with them! You can't just jump off a cliff and glide to China. Google? A more advanced MITS algorithm + inktomi's commodity cluster map-reduce architecture + inktomi's PPC. Indeed, had inktomi doubled down on search instead of their CDN, we might well be talking about inktomi and not Google. General and Special Relativity? Nope - http://www.quora.com/If-Albert-Einstein-had-never-existed-at-all-in-the-world-would-relativity-theory-have-been-found-and-proposed-by-others-by-now http://www.quora.com/If-Albert-Einstein-had-never-existed-at.... There are no really new ideas out there - merely combinations old ones that "hang in the air". There are no new ideas - merely old ones combined in unique ways. Everything is a remix (https://vimeo.com/14912890 https://vimeo.com/14912890).

Retric 14y ago
The first battery is in no way a simple composition of existing ideas. Inventing a useful and novel idea is both hard and rare. The most extreme example might just be the fact Australia had 'modern' humans for 40,000 years without inventing the bow and arrow even though they had spears. And the rest of the world spent those 40,000 years without inventing the returning boomerang even though 'hunting' sticks where found in Europe well over 10,000 years ago.
- Dn_Ab 14y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_battery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_battery suggests that basic knowledge and early experimentation with the known concept of electricity and a disagreement about whether a dead frog's leg can generate electricity inspired the battery. Volta notes those whose work he relied on.
  - 14y ago

paulsutter 14y ago

It's really hard to build a company. It's really admirable to build a successful tech company, no matter how lofty or straightforward the project. The Instagram guys are also heroes to me. Zip2, Elon's first company, didn't invent anything new or solve any hard problems either (it started out as an online yellow pages). But it was really important that Elon learned from that process. And I know that he enjoyed it, I remember meeting with him when they were 10 guys in one room. And Zip2 was worth $300M to Altavista, which is how Elon paid for the Maclaren mentioned in the recent video. I'm also glad that Peter Thiel and Max Levchin and others have started to create social pressure for us to think about how to do big things that really benefit society. And maybe we only need to feel that pressure after we've done one or two successful things. As individuals it's also ok to ignore it and say hey I really enjoy building companies and don't need to change the world in a huge way.

confluence 14y ago
Did Elon get screwed by the VCs during the formation and sale of Zip2? Apparently his brother, their friend and Elon got diluted out during later funding rounds. They squeezed his take down to a "measly" $20 million. At least that's what I've read (it's also probably the reason he started all over again with X.com which eventually morphed into PayPal).

pmboyd 14y ago

Netscape no longer exists as a company (or meaningful subdivision of AOL) so that might not have been the best strategy. Copying got them ahead quickly but didn't keep them there.

adestefan 14y ago
Poor business decisions and copying by a competitor is what killed Netscape.

mdonahoe 14y ago

My favorite part of the video is when he advanced the slide, and you realize you are looking at an overhead project with printed transparency instead of PowerPoint. 1994, simpler times.