Marc Andreessen on Inventing The Internet Browser (How We all Access the Internet)

Key ideas

Recalling events over 30 years old, Andreessen describes building Mosaic for a future others dismissed, keeping the web open, and reaching Netscape's idea by elimination.

From a machine transcript of the audio. Quotes link to the moment they are said.

1. 1

   Trust what works over what experts say

   Andreessen recalls a consensus, lasting into 1994, that the internet would never be a business and that big companies would win with proprietary networks. The evidence offered includes a first issue of Wired without the word internet and a Wall Street Journal reporter whose editors would not run the story. Andreessen says this doubt kept eating away even while the product was plainly working.

2. 2

   Build for the world you expect

   Andreessen says Mosaic rested on two assumptions: everyone would have a graphical computer and a fast connection, even though most people then had neither. Computer scientists objected to the waste, Andreessen recalls, but the hope was that a compelling enough interface would itself push people and phone companies toward broadband. Andreessen says this was a glimmer of an idea at the time, not a confident view.

3. 3

   Make it easy for anyone to contribute

   Andreessen says openness was a rule: anyone could create servers and content, protocols stayed in readable text, and a view-source feature let people see how any page was made. In Andreessen's account this helped past the cold-start problem, with each new page giving readers a reason to come and each new reader giving writers a reason to publish.

4. 4

   Test plans and drop the ones that fail

   Andreessen recalls that the first two plans for the company with Jim Clark were software for interactive television and an online service for Nintendo machines. They modeled both and concluded neither would work yet, and came to internet software as the option left standing, despite its known problems.

5. 5

   Commercial demand needs a company around it

   Andreessen recalls about 400 commercial inquiries reaching one mailbox while the project had no price sheet, and a federal grant request for customer support being denied. Andreessen says the idea of raising venture capital was simply unknown to Andreessen at the time. The later dispute with the University of Illinois, which Andreessen says ended with Netscape suing first and settling in cash, is told as one side's memory, with an admission of lacking the skills to handle it better.

In Marc’s words

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