Marc Andreessen

Marc Andreessen is an American entrepreneur, investor, and software engineer. Andreessen rose to prominence in 1994 when he co-created Mosaic, one of the first web browsers. He also cofounded the Netscape Communications Corporation. Along with Ben Horowitz, he is the cofounder of venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz, also known as a16z.

Marc Andreessen was born on July 9, 1971, in Cedar Falls, Iowa, US. As a child, Andreessen taught himself BASIC, a programming language, so he could design his own computer games. Initially planning on being an electrical engineer, Andreessen changed his career path after being admitted into the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and getting a part-time job at the school's computer lab, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Andreessen graduated from the university in 1993 with a degree in computer science.

While at the University of Illinois, Andressen and his peers at the NCSA co-authored Mosaic, an early internet browser designed to be user-friendly and non-technical. Mosaic became widely popular after it was available as a free download by the NCSA. Shortly after leaving the university, Andreessen moved to Silicon Valley, where he met Jason Clark, the founder and former president of Silicon Graphics, Inc. In April 1994, the two founded Mosaic Communications, later renamed the Netscape Communications Company. The company was sold to AOL in November 1998 for $4.2 billion.

Andreessen later founded and sold the software company LoudCloud, renamed Opsware, in 1999. It was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2007 for $1.6 billion. Andreessen also cofounded Ning, a company that provides a platform for social networking websites, with Gina Bianchini in 2005. The company was acquired by Glam Media in 2011 for $150 million.

In 2009, Andreessen and Ben Horowitz founded venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he also serves as general partner. The company is stage agnostic and invests in seed- and late-stage technology companies in the consumer, enterprise, bio/healthcare, crypto, and fintech spaces. a16z has $19.2 billion in assets under management across multiple funds, which include $1.4 billion in Bio funds, $3.1 billion in crypto funds, and the Cultural Leadership Fund. As of 2021, the firm has made over 1,000 investments, acting as lead investor in 444 of them, and 179 exits.

Andreessen is also a board member of several Andreessen Horowitz portfolio companies: Applied Intuition, Carta, Dialpad, Honor, OpenGov, and Samsara. He is on the board of Facebook and served on the board of Hewlett-Packard from 2008 to 2018.