Marc Andreessen was on Charlie Rose last night, and I missed it. A buddy told me about it, and I wanted to watch, but things just got in the way. So here it is.
So, this is the very first time I’ve ever embedded video into a blog post. I couldn’t help myself.
Why?
I’ve never even heard Marc Andreessen talk until tonight, to be honest. I’ve been a huge fan of his actual technical work, and I’ve read some of his writings, and you almost can’t help but follow his career if you work with internet-related things directly, but I’ve somehow missed him at all of the conferences, never seen an interview… until now. And you know, it turns out that in this interview, he validates several posts that have been lying around on this blog for some time.
He talks about the evolution of web commerce and cloud computing and how it lowers the bar for startups.
He talks about news, newspapers and how they absolutely must kill the print edition, now.
He talks about social media, where it came from, where it’s going, “viral”, etc.
This is not to compare myself to Andreessen in any way — that’s ludicrous. But it’s nice to get some validation from on high for some of the thoughts and ideas I’ve had. Now if only I could write a tool that will lay the foundation for the next generation of human interaction, I’ll be all set 😉
It should go without saying that I learned some things, but the biggest thing I learned came from just a tiny little quip buried in the middle of the video somewhere. He says, while talking about the iPhone, that it was “beamed in from 5 years in the future”. I think problems should be thought about that way in general. I’ve adopted a new way of thinking about products and services from pondering on this for all of 5 minutes. Find a service that solves a problem now, or find a problem that exists now — either one. Now think about how that problem will be solved in 5 years. Now set a deadline for solving that problem in 1 year.
Sounds impossible? Not a chance. Impossible is just another excuse to get creative, change your perspective, rethink the problem, and produce a solution. Listening to really smart people talk can be inadvertently inspiring. Thanks Marc!