Marc Andreessen has made a call to action around building big in response to our current crisis. First, some areas of agreement: it’s not like we haven’t written a “where’s my flying car” article ourselves back 10 years ago. And I agree that regulatory capture and fear of change are both big negatives. But while I’d get this sort of big idea criticism from someone like Elon Musk. But Marc Andreessen’s VC investments are often the usual Silicon Valley fluff shuffling bits around. Andreessen Horowitz invested in Crypto Kitties, for heaven’s sake. So if he controls a few billion in investor funds and doesn’t invest a penny in anything he’s advocating here, there’s a pretty good chance he doesn’t actually think it’s feasible or profitable. And he’s way too smart to think the principal problems are something amorphous like will, desire, and fear of change. The real problems are incentives, integrity, and the lack of a shared community whose future will matter more to people than grabbing their bit.
Here’s an analogy: If a random guy on the street says “federal deficits are an existential problem” then it’s a reasonable opinion, and maybe he really believes it. But if it’s a congressman saying that and always voting for spending increases and tax cuts, he’s full of poo. Same here — Marc Andreessen has a good degree of control over at least $4B in investment money, and can probably draw in more with his firm’s brand. If he really thought that “all of these fields are highly lucrative already and should be prime stomping grounds for capitalist investment” then a chunk of that would go to moonshots instead of Crypto kitties. If Marc Andreessen doesn’t put his money where his mouth is, that means he doesn’t really believe it.
