Top all-time · #475
Marc Andreessen
Personal blog · blog.pmarca.comstartupsbusiness
Marc Andreessen writes Andreessen Horowitz, a personal blog at blog.pmarca.com about startups and business. Since 2007, 121 different Hacker News readers have linked it 224 times, most often “The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 4: The only thing that matters”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Rarely recommended · 3 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Andreessen's old blog for startup and productivity advice (product/market fit, not keeping a schedule) and for posts on investing and bitcoin. Some say it is worth reading.
- Recommended for · 3 comments
- One commenter: "very much worth reading"; others call posts "good reading" and a "great post".
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Marc Andreessen is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is an innovator and creator, one of the few to
Most-linked posts?
- The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 4: The only thing that matters9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2007-06-26
- The Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2007-06-05
- Pmarca: The three kinds of platform you meet on the Internet4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2007-09-17
- Why Bitcoin Matters4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2014-01-22
- Unshackle the Middle Class4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2013-03-26
- When Carl Icahn Ran a Company: The Story of TWA4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2014-03-18
- Marc Andreessen: How To Hire The Best People You've Ever Worked With3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2007-06-07
- The Pmarca Guide to Startups, Part 6: How much funding is too little? Too much?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2007-07-03
- The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 2: When the VCs say "no"3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2007-06-20
- When Carl Icahn Ran a Company: The Story of TWA3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2007-06-04
What Hacker News says?
Status games are very interesting. Some of the best people at manipulating status are kiosk sellers. "As he was rising from obscurity in Philadelphia and wanted the approval of some important man, Franklin would often maneuver that man into doing Franklin some unimportant favor, like lending Franklin a book. Thereafter, the man would admire and trust Franklin more because a nonadmired and nontrusted Franklin would b…
Comment linking /2008/03/the-psychology.html
on “Why I Quit Being So Accommodating (1922)”Submitted When Carl Icahn Ran a Company: The Story of TWA as a story · 178 points
HN discussionYou would probably spend your time writing blog posts criticizing other successful people [1], or invading small peninsulas like Crimea. [1] http://blog.pmarca.com/2014/03/18/when-carl-icahn-ran-a-comp...
Comment linking /2014/03/18/when-carl-icahn-ran-a-company-the-story-of-twa/
on “What if you didn't need money or attention?”Submitted Unshackle the Middle Class as a story · 170 points
HN discussionThat's great. Companies need to start IPOing earlier again. http://blog.pmarca.com/2013/03/26/unshackle-the-middle-class...
Comment linking /2013/03/26/unshackle-the-middle-class/
on “Apple becomes the first $1T company”Submitted Pmarca: If Microsoft goes fully hostile on Yahoo as a story · 134 points
HN discussionHis old blog is no longer online, but someone collected it here. Very much worth reading: http://pmarchive.com/ edit: Ah, it was published as an ebook as well this January: http://a16z.com/2015/01/09/pmarca-blog-ebook/ His current blog: http://blog.pmarca.com/archive/
Comment linking /archive/
on “The Mind of Marc Andreessen”Submitted The Psychology of Entrepreneurial Misjudgment, part 1: Biases 1-6 as a story · 85 points
HN discussionThe other option that Matt Levine has been writing about more lately is no longer having integer number of shares (jedberg’s precision question is similar). Amusingly, there are folks who take the other side of this argument, and very drastically like Scott Kupor at Andreessen Horowitz [1] > How did this happen? Because decimalization reduced the “tick size,” the minimum increment in which stock prices can trade, to…
Comment linking /2013/03/26/unshackle-the-middle-class/
on “Staff Report on Algorithmic Trading in U.S. Capital Markets [pdf]”Submitted Introducing our new venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz as a story · 72 points
HN discussionPermalink: http://blog.pmarca.com/2014/03/18/when-carl-icahn-ran-a-comp...
Comment linking /2014/03/18/when-carl-icahn-ran-a-company-the-story-of-twa/
on “When Carl Icahn Ran a Company: The Story of TWA”Submitted Open Social: a new universe of social applications all over the web (Marc Andreessen) as a story · 55 points
HN discussionAndreessen responded: http://blog.pmarca.com/2014/03/03/my-statement-on-ebay-direc...
Comment linking /2014/03/03/my-statement-on-ebay-director-role-and-governance/
on “When Carl Icahn Ran a Company: The Story of TWA”Submitted Why not to do a startup as a story · 51 points
HN discussionLet’s not forget this gem which with a straight face placed blockchain at the same level as the PC or the entire internet: http://blog.pmarca.com/2014/01/22/why-bitcoin-matters/ Obviously he played a big role in Mosaic and Netscape back in the day, and a16z has also been quite innovative, but he gets way too much attention when he’s just talking his book.
Comment linking /2014/01/22/why-bitcoin-matters/
on “Marc Andreessen: VR will be 1,000 times bigger than AR”Submitted The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 4: The only thing that matters as a story · 46 points
HN discussionVery strange, I tried searching http://blog.pmarca.com for obama and romney and there were no results. But I swear that back in 2007-2008 I remember him having blog posts about meeting Obama? edit: found it at the archive http://pmarchive.com/an_hour_and_a_half_with_barack_obama I guess it was just deleted over time as the blog.pmarca.com was made more professional.
Comment linking /
on “Proposed new HTML tag: IMG (1993)”Submitted The Pmarca Guide to Career Planning, Part 1 as a story · 45 points
HN discussion"There's always more work that I could be doing, and it's sometimes hard to judge what's a fair day's worth of work." I agree. But, isn't this an independent question? For such things an individual's flavor of "The Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity" should help. http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the_pmarca_guid.html Also, look at this gem posted by edw519, : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=191275 What do you th…
Comment linking /2007/06/the_pmarca_guid.html
on “PG: Disconnecting Distraction”Submitted Probably a Good Time to Say That I Don’t Believe Robots Will Eat All the Jobs as a story · 44 points
HN discussionJust like Marc Andreessen's "don't keep a schedule": http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the_pmarca_guid.html
Comment linking /2007/06/the_pmarca_guid.html
on “Holding a program in one's head”Submitted Luck and the entrepreneur, part 1: The four kinds of luck as a story · 43 points
HN discussionthis is very well said, the single biggest determent of a startups success is product/market fit, not team (i.e co-founder) (see:The Only thing that Matters: http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the-pmarca-gu-2.html ). If you've got a solid idea you need to push it forward, not having a perfect co-founder right away is a lame "go or no go" decider. Pitch constantly, get out of your apartment, and scour your networks for c…
Comment linking /2007/06/the-pmarca-gu-2.html
on “Absolutely, DO NOT, get a co-founder!”Submitted Age and the entrepreneur, part 1: Some data as a story · 40 points
HN discussionPaul may be referring to these seminal posts: The Only Thing That Matters: http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the-pmarca-gu-2.html How much funding is too little? Too much? http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/07/the-pmarca-guid.html
Comment linking /2007/07/the-pmarca-guid.html
on “Overnight success takes a long time”Submitted Angels vs. VCs as a story · 39 points
HN discussionIf you are giving a product or service away I don’t think you can assert that you have “product/market fit.” You have a very compelling application, but until you figure out who is going to pay you for it, and how much it’s worth to them, I don’t think you can put a check in the box next to “product/market fit” since you don’t pass this test from the same Marc Andreessen post you reference ( http://blog.pmarca.com/2…
Comment linking /2007/06/the-pmarca-gu-2.html
on “Lessons of Y Combinator: Things I’d do differently after 2 startups”Submitted Marc Andreessen: Analyzing the Facebook Platform, three weeks in as a story · 39 points
HN discussionAs Pmarca wrote: attempting to improve your batting average of hits versus misses is a waste of time as you progress through a creative career. Instead you should just focus on more at-bats -- more output. Link here: http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/08/age-and-the-ent.html The ratio of success to failure in tech startups ranges from 1:3 to 1:10 depending on who you read. That means pace yourself, you might have to do thi…
Comment linking /2007/08/age-and-the-ent.html
on “Ask YC: Dealing with post startup depression”Submitted The Pmarca Guide to Career Planning, Part 2: Skills and Education as a story · 36 points
HN discussion
