Marc Andreessen
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Marc Andreessen (born July 9, 1971, in New Lisbon, Wisconsin) is the chair of Opsware, a software company, and cofounder of Ning, a consumer Internet company. He is best known as a cofounder of Netscape Communications Corporation and co-author of Mosaic, the first widely-used web browser.
In 2005, it was revealed that he is one of the people behind Ning, which recently launched a free "playground" for social software.
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[edit] Education
Andreessen received his Bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As an undergraduate, he interned one summer at IBM in Austin, Texas. He also worked at the university's National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), where he became familiar with Tim Berners-Lee's open standards for the World Wide Web. Andreessen and a full-time salaried co-worker Eric Bina worked on creating a user-friendly browser with integrated graphics that would work on a wide range of computers. The resulting code was the Mosaic web browser. Andreessen was fastidious in monitoring and responding to all user comments for suggestions and improvements to the browser, which fueled its accessibility and its popularity.
[edit] Netscape
After his graduation from the university in 1993, Andreessen moved to California to work at Enterprise Integration Technologies. Andreessen then met with Jim Clark, the recently-departed founder of Silicon Graphics. Clark believed that the Mosaic browser had great commercial possibilities and suggested starting an Internet software company. Soon Mosaic Communications Corporation was in business in Mountain View, California, with Andreessen as cofounder and vice president of technology. The University of Illinois was unhappy with the company's use of the Mosaic name, so Mosaic Communications changed its name to Netscape Communications, and its flagship web browser was the Netscape Navigator.
In the year between the formation of the company and its IPO, Andreessen engaged in extensive public outreach on behalf of his vision of the web browser's potential, something he had in fact done continuously since making the decision to distribute Mosaic for free via the Internet.
One of these events, hosted by Internet commercialization pioneer Ken McCarthy, was captured on video [1] and provides a unique look at the state of the web between the time Andreessen and his colleagues launched Mosaic and the time when web browsers and servers became mainstream commercial products. At the time of the recording, Andreessen was 23 years old.
Netscape's IPO in 1995 propelled Andreessen into the public's imagination. Featured on the cover of People magazine and other publications, Andreessen became the poster-boy wunderkind of the Internet bubble generation that would repeat itself over and over: young, twenty-something, high-tech, ambitious, and worth millions (or billions) of dollars practically overnight.
Netscape's success attracted the attention of Microsoft, which recognized the web's potential and wanted to put itself at the forefront of the rising Internet revolution. Microsoft licensed the Mosaic source code from Spyglass, Inc., an offshoot of the University of Illinois, and turned it into Internet Explorer. The resulting battle between the two companies became known as the Browser Wars.
Netscape was acquired in 1999 for $4.2 billion by AOL, which made Andreessen its Chief Technology Officer.
[edit] Loudcloud
However, he would soon leave to form Loudcloud, a services-based Web hosting company that underwent an IPO in 2001. Loudcloud sold its hosting business to EDS and changed its name to Opsware in 2003, where Andreessen continues to serve as chairman.
[edit] Current ventures
Andreessen is an investor in social news website Digg and several other early-stage technology startups, like Plazes. His latest project is Ning, which launched in October of 2005.
[edit] Personal life
Andreessen is married to Laura Arrillaga, who is the chairwoman of the Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund [2], and the daughter of Silicon Valley real estate billionaire John Arrillaga.
