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How Marc Andreessen Reconfigures Reality
Methods of Prosperity newsletter no. 129: Marc Andreessen
Sean Allen Fenn
December 04, 2025
“The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think.”
Most successful entrepreneurs follow one of two patterns.
You can build a company, sell it, then immediately start another one, repeat. If that’s you, you’re the Serial Founder.
Either that, or you can build one massive company and stay with it for decades. If that’s you, you’re the Empire Builder.
Marc Andreessen chose a third path.
He sold his companies at strategic peaks.
Then he transitioned to venture capital rather than building another company.
Marc Andreessen is an American entrepreneur, software engineer, and venture capitalist.
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He was born on July 9, 1971, in Cedar Falls, Iowa. He earned a computer science degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. That’s where he developed Mosaic. It was while he was at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).
Marc Andreessen co-authored the Mosaic web browser in 1993. Which is the first widely used graphical web browser. Development work began in late 1992. The first public releases appeared in early 1993.
He moved from Mosaic to Netscape by leaving the University of Illinois’ NCSA lab. It was early 1994. That’s when his student employment ended. The university retained control of Mosaic’s code and licensing.
So he joined a Silicon Valley startup. It was Enterprise Integration Technologies/Terisa Systems. That gave him exposure to the commercial internet and encryption/software commercialization issues.
A guy named Jim Clark founded Silicon Graphics, and left when he noticed Mosaic’s impact. So he sought out Andreessen with the idea of starting a new company. Jim Clark wanted to commercialize a next‑generation browser. He called it a “Mosaic killer”.
In March–April 1994 they agreed to form a startup. Andreessen would be co-founder and vice president of technology.
The new company recruited several former Mosaic developers from Illinois. They wanted to rewrite a browser from scratch. But they couldn’t use NCSA’s Mosaic code so it could be a clean commercial product. The University of Illinois objected to them using the “Mosaic” name.
The problem was Clark and Andreessen named their new company Mosaic Communications Corporation. So they rebranded as Netscape Communications Corporation in late 1994. Its flagship product became Netscape Navigator. Netscape crushed Mosaic as the dominant browser.
AOL acquired Netscape for $10 billion. He cashed out at the peak of the dot-com boom.
In September 1999, Andreessen discovered a need for cloud services like AWS. Of course, this was before such a thing existed. Ben Horowitz would be the CEO of their new startup, Loudcloud. Ben worked with Marc at Netscape, along with two other people. Tim Howes as CTO, and Sik Rhee (who was at AOL as well as Netscape) as a managed services provider. Loudcloud was infrastructure as a service.
“Out of ten swings at the bat, you get maybe seven strikeouts, two base hits, and if you are lucky, one home run. The base hits and the home runs pay for all the strikeouts.”
In 2002 the dot‑com bubble burst.
Loudcloud pivoted. Opsware was a product that spun out of Loudcloud’s original managed‑services model. The whole company rebranded around that product. Loudcloud sold its hosting/operations business to Electronic Data Systems Corporation (EDS). At which point the public company renamed itself from Loudcloud, Inc. to Opsware, Inc.
HP acquired Opsware in 2007 for $14.25 per share in cash, valuing the deal at about $1.6 billion. The sale gave HP a leading data-center automation platform. It produced a solid financial outcome for the long‑term Loudcloud/Opsware investors. This was a robust, de‑risked exit. They exited at a strong valuation. Understand that this was after a long, risky turnaround. Also consider the market. Continued independence would likely have required significant additional capital. Not to mention execution risk against much larger platform players. Selling to HP for $1.6 billion was an attractive price.
In 2009, Andreessen co-founded Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a prominent Silicon Valley VC firm. They invested in tech giants like Facebook and Airbnb, managing billions in assets. His net worth stands at about $1.9 billion as of January 2025.
Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz gained financial freedom through strategic exits.
Why is this a smart method of prosperity?
Ben Horowitz explained it in his essay, Should You Sell Your Company?
“Based on a lot of analysis and soul searching, I determined that the current local maxima was higher than we could expect to achieve in the next 3-5 years.”
The market was transforming (virtualization).
The competitive landscape had changed (BMC would acquire either Opsware or competitor Bladelogic).
The company had reached a valuation peak that would take 3-5 years to exceed.
Continuing would require deferring earnings for a very long time.
You can stay on the “entrepreneurial treadmill” of building company after company.
Or you can be like Andreessen Horowitz and become a venture capitalist.
Why not?
This might be a good fit for you if you want to multiply your impact across dozens of companies.
You can benefit from the success of others rather than shouldering all the risk yourself.
You can build lasting wealth through carried interest in a VC fund managing billions.
You can maintain influence without the operational burden of being CEO.
“I’m a firm believer that most people who do great things are doing them for the first time. Returning to my theory of hiring, I’d rather have someone all fired up to do something for the first time than someone who’s done it before and isn’t that excited to do it again.”
The Financial Freedom Insight:
Most entrepreneurs stay on the hamster wheel. Always building.
Andreessen leveled up. How? Rather than continuing to rely on his own operational efforts, he chose to:
1. Sell at strategic peaks rather than holding for emotional reasons.
2. Recognize when the risk/reward no longer favored staying independent.
3. Transition to a role where he could generate wealth through others’ success.
Opsware’s exit…
“represented a 74% premium over the prior six-month average, and a forty-fold return for anyone who had bet on us at our low point.”
The acquisition multiple of 16 times trailing revenue…
“still far exceeds that of any other billion dollar-plus enterprise software acquisition—ever.”
This is a strategic exit philosophy.
You must know when to sell.
You must know how to maximize value.
You must know when to transition from operator to investor.
That’s what makes Marc Andreessen (and Ben Horowitz) different from most entrepreneurs.
I like you,
– Sean Allen Fenn
PS: The purpose of wealth is freedom. You can have financial freedom, but not by yourself. That’s why we’re building our core group of people. It’s a community to help each other achieve financial freedom. One way is by pooling our resources to invest in Multifamily real estate together. Whatever method of prosperity you choose, don’t go at it alone. You can now join our Methods of Prosperity community on Telegram here:
