Is Marc Andreessen trying to get someone to write a dystopian novel about our constantly connected near future? Because short of total environmental collapse, it’s hard to imagine a world bleaker than what he described today on CNBC. He thinks that one day soon, people will feel “cut off from the world” without their face computers/digital pacifiers.
How many times does Peter Thiel have to tell you that unless your startup disrupts death or advances the singularity, he’s just not that impressed?
CNN Money reports that Mr. Thiel took the conference stage with Twitter investor Marc Andreessen earlier this week. And while he’s pretty sure that Twitter will still be around in 10 years, and he thinks the company’s $10 billion valuation is fair, he just can’t get all that excited about it.
He told the crowd: Read More
The Rosewood Hotel on Sand Hill Road, conveniently nestled near almost every important VC firm in the Valley, has long been a hotspot for wealthy VCs to meet potential mates. This is due in part to love concierge Amy Andersen, founder of the super stealth matchmaking company Linx Dating. She helped cultivate an unofficial “Cougar Night” at the hotel after setting up a meet-and-greet there for her wealthy clients in 2009. Read More
That Sergey Brin sighting amid the hedgerow at Vanity Fair‘s Oscar party must have gone to the glossy’s head. Today, they attempted to catalog “Silicon Valley’s Most Stylish.”
Try as Jack Dorsey might with his “modified Mandarin collars,” this is a crowd that once compared its colorful sock flair to boardroom “gang signs,” so the bar was already low–especially considering that the New York Times already marked and tagged the every pair of Louboutins in the Bay Area. Read More
Quinn Norton speaks out on what life inside the Aaron Swartz investigation was like. “This will not be the final word on Aaron’s story, nor is it intended to be. Two years later, these are the events as I remember them, and the feelings as I knew them.” [The Atlantic]
Former dotcom millionaire Jennifer Sultan plead guilty to selling prescription drugs and conspiring to sell a firearm in exchange for four years in prison on Friday. Ms. Sultan, who sold her company Live Online during the first boom, burned through her fortune after becoming addicted to prescription pain killers. Let this be a cautionary tale for bubble 2.0. [New York Times]
Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz took to Rap Genius this weekend to decode Andrew Mason’s goodbye letter. Swag? [TechCrunch]
If you got an email this weekend from Evernote that it had reset your password, that’s because the company suffered a major security breach. [The Verge]
SpaceX Dragon has successfully docked at the International Space Station, which is great because we don’t really need any more griping from Elon Musk right now. [Ars Technica]
Agitprop about “coding as the new literacy,” lost momentum last year somewhere around the time adults felt compelled to issue public apologies to Codecademy for ignoring their email tutorials. But with President Obama shouting out high tech high schools in the State of the Union–and Chinese hackers inspiring a possible “Sputnik moment“–the cause of educating young minds in the ways of coding seems to have taken on new urgency.
Witness, for example, this video produced by Code.org, a nonprofit devoted to enhancing computer programming education. ”Learn about a new ‘superpower’ that isn’t being taught in in 90% of US schools,” the description advertises. Wait, America still has a chance at staying a superpower? Tell me more! Read More
GQ just published an in-depth feature on Reed Hastings, the endearingly gaffe-prone (RIP Qwikster) Netflix CEO. With a slew of original programming coming to the platform–including a new Netflix exclusive season of Arrested Development–Mr. Hastings is working diligently to turn the video streaming service into a true HBO competitor.
That’s all well and good, but Mr. Hastings has other worries on his mind: mainly, why did GQ scrap his photo spread? (No doubt the shoot would’ve given the Terry Richardson-Beyonce collab a run for its money.) Read More
A funny thing happened the other day: somebody actually mentioned the debate over how the government should tax money managers in the context of the fiscal cliff. Read More
Marc Andreessen talks fast. And so when the Andreessen Horowitz co-founder sat down for a conversation with The New York Times’s Andrew Ross Sorkin at Dealbook’s Opportunities for Tomorrow conference, he covered a lot of ground, from the fiscal cliff to higher education, the future of English majors, newspapers and self-driving cars, and other topics our fingers weren’t fast enough to keep up with. Read More
Earlier today, serial entrepreneur and investor Chris Dixon made it official. The cofounder of SiteAdvisor (acquired by McAfee) and Hunch (acquired by eBay), who invests both personally and through Founder Collective, will be decamping our fair city for sunnier shores to join Andreessen Horowitz as the Sand Hill Road powerhouse’s seventh general partner. We spoke with Mr. Dixon by phone shortly after the announcement was made to find out what it means for the many ventures he’s involved in here (like eBay’s massive new Flatiron R&D lab, which is slated to house 200 developers and data scientists).
Don’t hold your breath for an East Coast outpost, as cofounder Marc Andreessen emphasized earlier, his is a “single office firm.” In fact, based on the tenor of our questions, Amy Grady, a representative from Andreessen Horowitz who was also on the call, wanted to assure us Mr. Dixon’s hire was about more than just geography. “We didn’t hire Chris just because of New York. It’s a huge bonus, he’s obviously really tapped in, but if we find an entrepreneur with a great idea in Idaho, we’ll invest!”
Silicon Prairie, start your pitch decks. Read More
