$300 Million Marc Andreessen Fund Is Old School Cool

I talked to journalist extraordinaire Renay San Miguel this morning concerning the new Marc Andreessen fund.  They just announced that they closed a $300 million fund.  Renay did a great piece for the Ecommerce Times.

When I talked to Renay, I had just read an interview with Andreessen on PEHub.  Some things that I found interesting about the announcement were:

• No specific investment target – the article mentions that they will be doing investments from angel to as large as $50 million.  One would typically see specific investment targets from traditional venture capitalists.

• CTO as CEO – Marc mentioned that he likes investing in companies with a technical CTO which is not too unusual.  But, he goes on to mention that he likes to see these technical founders growing into a CEO role.  I don't think you'd here most traditional VCs say this.  They tend to put their own management team in once the company gets into later investment stages and becomes more mature as a business.

• Focus on consumer Internet – the interview mentions that the fund will focus on consumer Internet versus diversifying into other segments like Cleantech.

I mentioned to Renay that this fund announcement really felt like a breath of fresh air. It felt a little like a traditional venture capital approach combined with a strong entrepreneurial sentiment towards their investment thesis.  There has been a bunch of blog posts from local Seattle-based entrepreneurs around the benefits of bootstrapping.  Some good posts are here and here.  While there are businesses that can justify bootstrapping, many of the businesses that are going to be really big ideas do require
substantial upfront capital.  You may not need as much capital upfront as we all used to require to launch our ventures.  But, I argue that having quality investors with the right capital structure is a preferable way to go if you are trying to build a substantial enterprise.