AndreesseGood Times For Tech Startups

The startup technology industry is in a mature phase of recovery and growth says Marc Andreessen, co-inventor of the world’s first commercial browser and co-founder of a leading venture capital firm, in an interview at Stanford.

It’s been a slow recovery since the bubble of 2000, but now tech is in the “deployment stage” where new technology starts to work, it makes it into the hands of users, and it becomes cost effective. Market sizes for new technologies are well on their way to a billion users and startup tech companies are being valued at multi billion dollar numbers.

The Challenge for Tech Startups

Founders of startup technology businesses today are very product-centered. So much so that the art of building a company, most notably the art of sales and marketing, has been lost. The challenge is how to take fantastic products and integrate in top-level sales and marketing thinking. The next 5 years will be about putting the pieces back together.

The key to success in tech is the magical combination of pairing a technical visionary with a business guru. It proves to be a tough code to crack.

4,000 tech startups each year attempt to raise venture money with Andreessen’s VC firm, but only 20 are funded. The venture capital industry as a whole funds about 200 tech startups a year, but as few as 15 will generate approximately 95 percent of the returns.

What Success Looks Like

So what do these venture capital firms look for exactly? A huge market, a differentiated technology, and incredible people.

90% of this decision, however, is weighted on people. When it comes to people, there are two main things Andreessen says they look for: courage and genius.

VCs are looking for the magical combination between the two, but Andreessen proclaims that he is “biased towards people who never give up, who never quit” – those people that simply won’t stop.

Learn more by watching Marc Anderson’s talk online.