https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/interview-marc-andreessen-vc-and

"Marc Andreessen" by Joi, CC BY 2.0

Marc Andreessen should need no introduction, but I’ll do one anyway. He helped code the first widely used graphical web browser, Mosaic, which as I see it makes him one of the inventors of the internet. He co-founded Netscape and various other companies. He also co-founded the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (with Ben Horowitz), also known as A16Z, one of the country’s largest VC firms. Recently he has launched a media publication called Future, where he occasionally writes his thoughts.

Marc has been a sort of hero of mine ever since I was a teenager, when Netscape Navigator felt like it opened up the world. I came out to California in part to meet people like him. Now we know each other well, and he’s a subscriber to my blog! The thing I always like about talking to Marc is how he combines relentless optimism with the concrete knowledge to back up that optimism — both knowledge of specific details and a broad understanding of various schools of thought. Lots of people will tell you the future holds amazing possibilities; Marc will tell you exactly what those possibilities are, and why they’re possible.

In the interview that follows, I ask Marc ten questions about technology and the future — about automation, U.S. institutions, social media, competition from China, crypto, the future of the VC industry, and more.

N.S.: So, back in April of 2020 you wrote a very widely read essay called "It's Time to Build", basically arguing that the pandemic had exposed deep dysfunction in many of America's institutions and industries, and that we need to build new things to get ourselves out of this rut. I pretty strongly agree with that. My question is: What do you think are some of the top priorities for things we need to build, in both the private and public sectors? And who ought to be building them?

M.A.: The 15 months since I wrote It’s Time To Build have been dominated by three big events: the catastrophe of COVID, the systematic failure of virtually all public sector entities around the world (the formerly high functioning Asian nations are failing to vaccinate quickly), and the remarkable success of the private sector and in particular the American technology industry in helping us all get through this pandemic in far better collective shape that we had any right to expect. (See my new essay Technology Saves The World.)

So the good news is that, notwithstanding the apparent chronic collapse of state capacity virtually everywhere in our time, the private sector can and does deliver even under considerable duress, and even when much of our political system is devoted to stifling it with regulatory handcuffs and damaging it with misguided policies.

Now, God knows there is still a lot to build. For starters, most of our country, as well as most of the world, does not yet have the remarkably advanced standard of living that the elite readers of this interview have come to expect. Consider the three primary markers of the American Dream, or more generally middle class success -- housing, education, and health care. You have written at length on how all three of these success markers seem further and further out of reach for many regular people. I think -- and you would agree? -- that these three deficits are not only causing problems for how people live and how the economy functions, but are fouling our politics quite dramatically.

Housing, education, and health care are each ferociously complex, but what they have in common is skyrocketing prices in a world where technology is driving down prices of most other products and services. (See chart below.) I think we should build in the next decade new technologies, businesses, and industries that break these price curves -- and in fact reverse them, and make these three primary markers of the American dream easier and easier for regular people to attain. I’m proud that my venture firm has exciting startup investments in all three sectors, but we have a lot more work to do. I hope more people join us in this mission.

N.S.: One of the themes of my blog so far has been techno-optimism. I have to say that some of that attitude comes from talking to you over the years! Are you still optimistic about the near future of tech? And if so, which tech should we be most excited about?

M.A.: I am very optimistic about the future of tech, at least in the domains where software-driven innovation is allowed. It’s been a decade since I wrote my essay Software Eats The World, and the case I made in that essay is even more true today. Software continues to eat the world, and will for decades to come, and that’s a wonderful thing. Let me explain why.

First, a common criticism of software is that it’s not something that takes physical form in the real world. For example, software is not a house, or a school, or a hospital. This is of course true on the surface, but it misses a key point.

Software is a lever on the real world.

Someone writes code, and all of a sudden riders and drivers coordinate a completely new kind of real-world transportation system, and we call it Lyft. Someone writes code, and all of a sudden homeowners and guests coordinate a completely new kind of real-world real estate system, and we call it AirBNB. Someone writes code, etc., and we have cars that drive themselves, and planes that fly themselves, and wristwatches that tell us if we’re healthy or ill.

Software is our modern alchemy. Isaac Newton spent much of his life trying and failing to transmute a base element -- lead -- into a valuable material -- gold. Software is alchemy that turns bytes into actions by and on atoms. It’s the closest thing we have to magic.

So instead of feeling like we are failing if we’re not building in atoms, we should lean as hard into software as we possibly can. Everywhere software touches the real world, the real world gets better, and less expensive, and more efficient, and more adaptable, and better for people. And this is especially true for the real world domains that have been least touched by software until now -- such as housing, education, and health care.