If you want to get some cash from Internet pioneer Marc Andreessen, you now have an easy playbook as a guide. In a detailed blog post, the Netscape founder laid out exactly what he -- along with partner Ben Horowitz -- are looking to invest now that they have $300 million in the bank.
Andreessen lays out no fewer than seven characteristics of the type of entrepreneurs and companies he hopes to invest in -- including a preference for technical founders who can hold the CEO reins. Andreessen and Horowitz also have a preference for companies in Silicon Valley, with Andreessen writing that: "We do not think it is an accident that Google is in Mountain View, Facebook is in Palo Alto, and Twitter is in San Francisco."
But Andreessen's been known to venture into Seattle in the past, most recently leading a $5.1 million deal with Madrona Venture Group in ExtraHop Networks.
And before Microsoft crushed Netscape, the Internet upstart was led by another executive with ties to Seattle: former McCaw Cellular CEO Jim Barksdale.
This isn't to say that Andreessen will be trolling Seattle any more than other places where smart geeks hang out. In the post, he makes it clear that he's looking for big world-changing ideas.
"Above all else, we are looking for the brilliant and motivated entrepreneur or entrepreneurial team with a clear vision of what they want to build and how they will create or attack a big market," he said.
The structure of the firm also is interesting. Horowitz and Andreessen are the only partners, and they reserve the right to invest as little as $50,000 and as much as $50 million. (That's quite a range). He also noted that they may invest in buyouts, public stocks and founders' shares.
"We will hang our hat as a firm on the fact that both of us have extensive direct entrepreneurial and operating experience," he said. "We have built companies, from scratch, to high scale -- thousands of employees and hundreds of millions of dollars of annual revenue. In short, we have done it ourselves. And we are building our firm to be the firm we would want to work with as entrepreneurs ourselves."
Meanwhile, here's how Claire Cain Miller of The New York Times describes the methods of Andreessen and Horowitz.
In a recent conversation, the two men shed some light on their investment strategies, including their “secret plan” to watch which start-ups get acquired by big companies — and then finance firms that are doing what those start-ups would have done if they had stayed independent.
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