Marc Andreessen
Co-founder of Netscape and of the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz. Argues at length for building things, mostly in short form.
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What they believe
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There is no material problem, whether created by nature or by technology, that cannot be solved with more technology.
We believe that there is no material problem – whether created by nature or by technology – that cannot be solved with more technology.
a16z.comSaid 16 Oct 2023This on korrents
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The idea that AI will decide to kill humanity is a category error: it is math and code, built and controlled by people, not a living thing shaped by evolution.
My view is that the idea that AI will decide to literally kill humanity is a profound category error. AI is not a living being that has been primed by billions of years of evolution to participate in the battle for the survival of the fittest, as animals are, and as we are. It is math – code – computers, built by people, owned by people, used by people, controlled by people.
pmarca.substack.comSaid 6 Jun 2023This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These 2: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
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Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 22 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
There is no material problem, whether created by nature or by technology, that cannot be solved with more technology.
We believe that there is no material problem – whether created by nature or by technology – that cannot be solved with more technology.
The Techno-Optimist Manifesto Said 16 Oct 2023
Technology is a lever on the world -- the way to make more with less -- and productivity growth is the main driver of wages, industries and jobs.
We believe technology is a lever on the world – the way to make more with less. Economists measure technological progress as productivity growth: How much more we can produce each year with fewer inputs, fewer raw materials. Productivity growth, powered by technology, is the main driver of economic growth, wage growth, and the creation of new industries and new jobs, as people and capital are continuously freed to do more important, valuable things than in the past.
The Techno-Optimist Manifesto Said 16 Oct 2023
The idea that AI will decide to kill humanity is a category error: it is math and code, built and controlled by people, not a living thing shaped by evolution.
My view is that the idea that AI will decide to literally kill humanity is a profound category error. AI is not a living being that has been primed by billions of years of evolution to participate in the battle for the survival of the fittest, as animals are, and as we are. It is math – code – computers, built by people, owned by people, used by people, controlled by people.
Why AI Will Save The World Said 6 Jun 2023
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The single greatest risk of AI is not AI itself but that China wins global AI dominance and the United States and the West do not.
The single greatest risk of AI is that China wins global AI dominance and we – the United States and the West – do not.
Why AI Will Save The World Said 6 Jun 2023
AI will improve warfare by cutting wartime death rates, because commanders now decide under pressure on sharply limited information.
I even think AI is going to improve warfare, when it has to happen, by reducing wartime death rates dramatically. Every war is characterized by terrible decisions made under intense pressure and with sharply limited information by very limited human leaders.
Why AI Will Save The World Said 6 Jun 2023
The AI-extinction position is non-scientific: it offers no testable hypothesis, nothing that would falsify it, and no threshold for danger.
My response is that their position is non-scientific – What is the testable hypothesis? What would falsify the hypothesis? How do we know when we are getting into a danger zone?
Why AI Will Save The World Said 6 Jun 2023
Reading further back in history shows that what feels new and unique to the present era is usually a very old pattern.
What what I find generally is if I don't understand something, I I try to read backwards and and and kind of the further back back I read, the more universal things I find. And the more things that I think are kind of remarkable and unique to our era actually turn out to be quite universal.
Inside the Mind of A Famous Investor | Marc Andreessen Said 25 Jan 2022
Hostility to a new technology comes from people whose power rests on the old one, because the new technology reorders who holds status.
And so all of the people who have achieved positions of power and authority in the world based on prior generations of technology are inherently threatened by new technology because new technology will upend the power and status structures and then a new set of people will, you know, come to the foreground and and take the power.
Inside the Mind of A Famous Investor | Marc Andreessen Said 25 Jan 2022
The deepest political conflict of the internet era is between those using the network to reinforce top-down power and those using it to disrupt it.
what we have now is kind of at the at the sort of deepest level what we have is kind of this big fight between people who want to use the internet to basically reinforce top-down power uh, versus people who want to use it to disrupt top-down power.
Inside the Mind of A Famous Investor | Marc Andreessen Said 25 Jan 2022
Open access to information makes a closed information regime on the Soviet model fundamentally impossible to sustain.
it's like could you ever have another Soviet Union like in the era of the internet? Um you know North Korea's doing their damndest to try to maintain that model you know but without going full North Korea like I'm not sure you can. I I mean, I guess I'm an optimist on this point. Like I tend to think open access information basically makes a lot of these historical things, you know, fundamentally impossible.
Inside the Mind of A Famous Investor | Marc Andreessen Said 25 Jan 2022
Learning from failure accumulates as psychic scar tissue that narrows what a person is willing to consider as they get older.
as you age, you just naturally build up all of this all of this sort of psychic scar tissue and you have all these cautionary lessons in your in your head all the time. And you just you and and therefore as a consequence, right? Your your aperture of what you're willing to explore as you get older just shrinks.
Inside the Mind of A Famous Investor | Marc Andreessen Said 25 Jan 2022
A successful startup takes about five years to become an incumbent, and defending what it has built is the rational thing for it to do.
A successful startup has about five years until they become a new incumbent. Um and and they actually start to behave like an incumbent. That's rational. Like of course that's rational. Like they've now built something worth defending.
Inside the Mind of A Famous Investor | Marc Andreessen Said 25 Jan 2022
The drift from attacking to defending is a temptation facing every incumbent rather than a fault of any particular company.
I I would I would not say that about Google. I would just say that more generally like that is the incumbent temptation. Um it is is basically is basically go from attack mode to defend mode, right? Go from being the pirate to being the navy.
Inside the Mind of A Famous Investor | Marc Andreessen Said 25 Jan 2022
There are no bad ideas among qualified people starting technology companies; there is only timing and execution.
I no longer think there are any bad ideas. I I no longer think there are any qualified people starting tech companies that actually have bad ideas. I think all the ideas are good ideas. Um, I think it's just a I think it's just a question of timing and execution.
Inside the Mind of A Famous Investor | Marc Andreessen Said 25 Jan 2022
Every failed dot-com idea of the late 1990s has since been made to work by somebody.
you can go through the entire, I think at this point, catalog of all of the failed dot com ideas of the late 1990s, and I believe they've now all worked.
Inside the Mind of A Famous Investor | Marc Andreessen Said 25 Jan 2022
Young founders who appear to have no track record have almost always been working inside their problem for years already.
the reality is the kids that make new things work from scratch. It actually turns out that they actually have been deep in the domain for a long time. Almost every case, they've been thinking hard about the problem that they're trying to solve actually for in in a lot of cases for many years.
Inside the Mind of A Famous Investor | Marc Andreessen Said 25 Jan 2022
Investment performance should be judged at the level of a portfolio, never at the level of an individual investment.
success or failure is not at the unit of an individual investment. Right? Success or failure is at the level of a portfolio.
Inside the Mind of A Famous Investor | Marc Andreessen Said 25 Jan 2022
Almost everything worth doing sits in a probabilistic domain where a perfect score is not available.
in quote-unquote real life, right? Which is starting businesses or you know, writing books, right? Or composing music or playing basketball or playing poker, right? Or basically doing anything interesting we're in a probabilistic domain, right?
Inside the Mind of A Famous Investor | Marc Andreessen Said 25 Jan 2022
Mass schooling was designed as a factory a century ago, has run on autopilot since, and does not fit the world it now serves.
we built that system and then we set it on autopilot um and it's been on autopilot for 100 years and here we are and it doesn't fit at all to the world we live in today.
Inside the Mind of A Famous Investor | Marc Andreessen Said 25 Jan 2022
School reform cannot work, because the system being reformed has no intention of being reformed.
I'll tell you one thing I don't believe in is reform. Like I have all these friends that work on like you know school reform. God bless them like they're just the wonderful most wonderful sweetest well-intentioned people in the world and they're just burning huge amounts of money and time on trying to reform the system that has absolutely no intention of being reformed.
Inside the Mind of A Famous Investor | Marc Andreessen Said 25 Jan 2022
When a system's incentives produce bad behaviour, the blame belongs entirely to whoever created the incentives.
And then you have a choice which is do you blame the people who are exhibiting the terrible behavior or do you blame the people who created the incentives? Right? And and and he he believes and I agree on this. I I think 100% you blame the people who created the incentives.
Inside the Mind of A Famous Investor | Marc Andreessen Said 25 Jan 2022
Industries do not stay competitive markets; over time most settle into a monopoly or, more often, an oligopoly.
a lot of industries over time end up not like that. They end up not being actually a fair and free market with market discipline. They end up as something else. In the business world, what they end up with is either just, you know, one company with a full up monopoly or more commonly they end up with what's called an oligopoly
Inside the Mind of A Famous Investor | Marc Andreessen Said 25 Jan 2022
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Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 8 things — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
Recent
Recommends DIGGER
It turns out DIGGER is a work of pure cinematic genius. Strongly recommend, 4+ stars. Don’t read anything about it or pay attention to anything anyone says, just go.
x.com 4 Oct 2026
Loved Halt and Catch Fire
Halt and Catch Fire is extraordinary. It’s the best fictional portrayal of what a tech start up is actually like.
tim.blog 1 Jan 2018
Loved Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination
So the author, Neal Gabler, who has written the best biography on Walt Disney. And it’s a phenomenal book.
tim.blog 1 Jan 2018
What others say about Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination →
Show 5 more
Liked The Wizard of Menlo Park
The Wizard of Menlo Park is a great biography of Edison.
tim.blog 1 Jan 2018
Recommends The Hard Thing About Hard Things
If you want all the bad words, Ben’s book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things
tim.blog 1 Jan 2018
Loved Zero to One
I think Peter Teal’s book is self recommending and is an excellent book, Zero to One
tim.blog 1 Jan 2018
Recommends Only the Paranoid Survive
So High Output Management is one of Andy Grove’s books. It’s the best book on management ever written. He wrote another book called Only the Paranoid Survive
tim.blog 1 Jan 2018
Loved High Output Management
So High Output Management is one of Andy Grove’s books. It’s the best book on management ever written. He wrote another book called Only the Paranoid Survive
tim.blog 1 Jan 2018
Where they publish
Newsletter pmarca.substack.com An archive under their own name; the writing moved back to short form.
A small Substack under their own name, holding the longer pieces from the period they were writing them. The argument has since gone back to happening on X.
Link verified 1 Sept 2026.
x.com @pmarca The main channel by a distance: reposts, reactions and replies, daily; argument in the smaller share.
Where nearly all of the public argument happens — technology, economics, politics and the case for building. Volume is the thing to know about it: most posts are reposts or one-word reactions rather than a position, so what surfaces here is the small share carrying his own argument. The long threads the well-known pieces began as are rarer now than the channel's reputation suggests.
Recent
Link verified 1 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
About the English under a post
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