Marc Andreessen's New Gamble

In this excerpt from BW columnist Sarah Lacy's book, the co-founder of Netscape backs a social networking site named Ning

BusinessWeek.com columnist Sarah Lacy's Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0 is a look at the latest generation of Web companies and the charismatic figures behind them. Among the newbies: social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace (NWS), news site Digg.com, and the video-host site YouTube (GOOG). In this excerpt from the chapter entitled "The Return of the King," Lacy describes the recent activities of Silicon Valley pioneer Marc Andreessen:

It's hard to imagine a place Marc Andreessen would hate to be more than the Web 2.0 conference, held in November, 2006, at San Francisco's Palace Hotel. Yet here he is on day two, striding down the halls with a mini-entourage. He's staring straight ahead. No eye contact with anyone, which isn't hard, because at 6 ft. 4 in. he towers above most people.

This is a rare appearance for Andreessen. Forget conferences or parties—he rarely even leaves downtown Palo Alto unless it's one of his regular trips to Los Angeles (more so in his single days, before he married Laura Arrillaga in 2007) or Las Vegas (it's an hour away, same time zone, and he loves the fights).

Andreessen is here for one reason only: Gina Bianchini. She is launching Ning, the startup the two of them co-founded in 2004. Gina is the chief executive, and Andreessen, Ning's chief technology officer, is careful not to overshadow her. But the conference would put them on the program during prime time only if Andreessen showed up, too. So he stands onstage stone-faced while Gina talks. If you didn't know better, you might think he was her bodyguard. He sums up with a few quick—and smart—statements. And that's that.

To say Andreessen is "here" because of Gina has a meaning beyond just the conference. Three years earlier, Gina convinced Andreessen that the consumer Internet wasn't dead. Andreessen had met Gina through her previous company, Harmonic Communications, funded by Sequoia Capital. Andreessen was on the board, and Gina quickly impressed him, even as the company stalled. Harmonic sold software for companies' marketing departments that aimed to help them create sophisticated advertising campaigns that would include Internet advertising for the first time. Then, in 2000, the advertising recession hit, and "that was it for that business model," Andreessen says matter-of-factly. (The company was sold for a lackluster amount in 2003 to Dentsu, a large Japanese advertising agency.)

Andreessen—a co-author of the first popular Web browser, Mosaic, a co-founder of Netscape Communications, and founder of Opsware—is now in the elite category of having started two companies that both crossed the $1 billion milestone. Among all the entrepreneurs who've come through the Valley, you can count on two hands the number who've done that. And only one guy has done it three times: Jim Clark, Andreessen's Netscape colleague. Andreessen is now in a race with his former mentor, as he's hoping Ning will be his third billion-dollar outfit. Netscape was purchased for $4.2 billion in 1998 by AOL, itself later acquired by Time Warner (TWX). Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) bought Opsware for $1.6 billion in 2007.