Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape and Ning, which recently raised $60 million discussed innovation, winter and change this morning at Web2.0 in San Francisco. Here are selected quotes.
Often the very revolutionary things are not recognized upfront. …Many of the early ideas that we have had turned out to be a success. …Take Java for example, or the “cookies” which we have turned out on a weekend. Bookmarks, there must be a better way to do that.
There is no incentive for any company to create services which are not on a browser and there is no incentive for any user to use a service which is not on a browser. There are a lot of opportunities for new companies.
Most large media companies are not prepared for the shift. Newspapers and magazines may have ten times the number of readers online but tenth the revenues. They do not know yet how the bridge the gap. It could have some pretty serious consequences up the road.
About what he calls “The coming nuclear winter”: there is this dramatic thing happening in the financial markets. We are the most remote part of this crash happening now. The big lesson we learned in 2001 is that all parts of the economy are interrelated.