Lessons from a Tech Venture Capitalist

I first read about Marc Andreesen when a post appeared on my phone one day about his resignation from the eBay Board. It must be a great deal, as otherwise it won't be a flash news. So I decided to check Marc out and also to understand why his departure was so influential.

So here's some interesting facts about Andreesen:

• A co-developer in Mosaic, among the first widely used Web browsers, and as a co-founder of Netscape Communications Corp, the maker of the Netscape Navigator browser.
• Sits on the board of big IT firms such as HP, eBay.. ( you might smell some conflicts of interest there)
• Loathes Carl Icahn, another big name in the Silicon Valley. Addressed as an 'billionaire investor activist', Icahn often calls on large companies where he sits on the board or is a major shareholder (more than 5%) such as Apple to return cash to the shareholders when the management has no better idea on utilizing the funds than accumulating them OR conduct share buybacks to increase stock price. Andreesen loathes Icahn(owns 2.5% of eBay) because he does not add value to the companies, and most of the time only suggests breaking companies up for shareholders' benefits, and even nicknamed him "the evil Captain Kirk" of the Star Trek series.
• While Marc respects Warren Buffett's stature in the investing world, he thinks Buffett is really wrong about Bitcoin's future. He also thinks since Buffett is no authority in the world of tech, those opinions do not count and called Buffett "an old white man crapping on new technology they don't understand." Perhaps it's because Warren sees Bitcoin as nothing more than another method of transferring money, not unlike cheque, money order, online transfers and what-have-you that banks are doing at the moment, therefore calling it a "mirage".
• He thinks that the three most important tech trends are Bitcoin (cryptocurrency that's been a craze lately), online education and healthcare & technology.

And why did Andreesen quit eBay then? Was it because he felt like he had no more influence in the Board and the company's future? Andreesen saw eBay's decision to spin off PayPal as the straw that broke the camel's back after Icahn(another major shareholder of the company) managed the company to go for the spinoff after a long time. Of course, Icahn also accused Andreesen of having a conflict of interest when eBay sold Skype to a group of private investors, Andreesen venture capital firm included, for USD 1.9B ( fair valued at USD 2.75B). Skype was eventually sold to Microsoft for three times that price 18 months later at USD 8.5B, which infuriated Icahn !

Let's look into the reason why eBay spins off PayPal finally, when earlier efforts showed that it was spending time convincing shareholders otherwise. Icahn describes PayPal as a "jewel" and should pursue its outright sale while progressing on the plan of separating its payment from its online marketplace business.  Do not forget that Icahn owns 53 million shares of Apple ( and in today's value USD 5.45 billion dollars). So, just imagine if ApplePay eventually catches on the US market (and eventually adopted elsewhere globally, although personally I don't think it would come to Malaysia), Icahn stands to profit from it handsomely. His sentiments are shared by Elon Musk , the cofounder of PayPal and is also a CEO of Tesla.Icahn and Musk do not agree with eBay's strategy to keep PayPal as a fantastic business under wraps, seeing that online payment market is becoming more crowded with ApplePay coming into play, Amazon or some start-ups.

With Andreesen's departure from eBay, possibly it's because there's no more jewels in the company to be plundered and sold to VCs of his likeness anymore after Skype and PayPal. He's better off elsewhere with his wealth and influence. What will happen to eBay after this? We don't know and it's certainly worth watching.

The saga in Silicon Valley is bound to continue. Definitely better than the dramas on Astro these days.