The whole Andreesen interview is really bizarre. It starts off with him presenting what he says is the deal for tech bros. Which is that they invent something, get filthy rich go to all the best parties, and then give all their money away to charity. He said that his outlook on this started change when Zuckerberg said that he would give all his money to charity and everybody came out and poo-pooed it. But of course much of that just has to do with who Zuckerberg is. Everyone hates the guy. In large part because everyone has watched what Facebook has done to their family members. And yes, some of us are starting to figure out that having a charity that you donate all your money to and then your descendants control and remain filthy rich for generations isn't quite as charitable as those of us scratching off a check for $100 to United Way or the Red Cross or helping with the soup kitchen. And if you think you'll automatically get plaudits from conservatives, I present Bill Gates.
His next break was Biden appointing big tech sceptics to the FTC and SEC. I guess as a coin bro, he's just constitutionally disinclined to regulation by the SEC, but Sam Bankman isn't the first asshole out there and won't be the last. IIRC, the people who actually run Coinbase (which Andreesen funded) want regulation.
The final straw was a meeting between the Biden admin and big tech execs regarding AI which Andreesen characterized as the government wanting control. Per the NYT, Sam Altman had a somewhat different recollection of the meeting. So who knows exactly what happened. But I know that if you're looking for a boogeyman you're likely to find one.
And let's not forget it wasn't that long ago that conservatives wanted to axe section 230 entirely and also require platforms to host their speech.
All this led to his little tech manifesto. That someone needs to defend little tech and the startup from government, which is stifling innovation through regulation.
But part of me wants to slap him and remind him what happened to him when he was little tech: big tech gave away its competing product, which it used its deep pockets generated from other business to improve until its product was better than his product, and used its network of clients and suppliers to make its product the default on end-users' computers. Little tech's biggest threat isn't government . It's big tech.
So maybe he's forgotten that lesson. But I guess he was insulated from that when AOL decided to burn $10 billion on Netscape in 1998. So maybe that's a lesson he never learned.
Or maybe it's that he learned a different lesson. Founders and funders usually don't get paid through IPOs. They usually get paid by a big tech incumbent buying their startup. Looked at another way, government increasingly scrutinizing mergers and buyouts (think: the government opposing Facebook's purchase of Instagram instead of doing nothing) damages little tech not by regulating it directly, but by putting obstacles in the path of its major source of getting paid.
Looked at in this light, Andreesen's manifesto and turn to Trump isn't a principled stand for the little guy. It is a cynical attempt at covering his own interest as a VC funder in getting paid.