Marc Andreessen

Marc Lowell Andreessen (born July 9, 1971) is an American businessman and software engineer.

He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser with a graphical user interface; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and general partner of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

He co-founded and later sold the software company Opsware to Hewlett-Packard.

Andreessen is also a co-founder of Ning, a company that provides a platform for social networking websites and an inductee in the World Wide Web Hall of Fame.

Andreessen's net-worth is estimated at $1.7 billion.

Andreessen was born in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and raised in New Lisbon, Wisconsin.

He is the son of Patricia and Lowell Andreessen, who worked for a seed company.

After being shown the ViolaWWW graphic web browser in late 1992, Andreessen and full-time salaried co-worker Eric Bina worked on creating a browser with integrated graphics that could be ported to a wide range of computers, including Windows.

In December 1993, he received his bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC).

As an undergraduate, he interned twice at IBM in Austin, Texas.

He worked in the AIX graphics software development group responsible for the MIT X Window implementation and ports of the 3D language APIs: SGI's Graphics Language (GL) and PHIGS.

He also worked at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, where he became familiar with Tim Berners-Lee's open standards for the World Wide Web.

The result was the Mosaic web browser released in 1993.

"In the Web's first generation, Tim Berners-Lee launched the Uniform Resource Locator (URL), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and HTML standards with prototype Unix-based servers and browsers. A few people noticed that the Web might be better than Gopher. In the second generation, Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina developed NCSA Mosaic at the University of Illinois. Several million then suddenly noticed that the Web might be better than sex."

During his career, Andreesen has worked at Netscape, Opsware, founded Andreessen Horowitz and invested in many successful companies including, Facebook, Foursquare, GitHub, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Twitter.

After his graduation from UIUC in 1993, Andreessen moved to California to work at Enterprise Integration Technologies.

Andreessen then met with Jim Clark, the founder of Silicon Graphics, who had recently exited the firm.

Clark believed the Mosaic browser had great commercial possibilities and suggested starting an Internet software company.

Soon, Mosaic Communications Corporation was in business in Mountain View, California, with Andreessen as co-founder and vice president of technology.

The University of Illinois was unhappy with the company's use of the Mosaic name, so Mosaic Communications changed its name to Netscape Communications, and its flagship Web browser was the Netscape Navigator.

Netscape's IPO in 1995 put Andreessen into the public eye.

He was featured on the cover of Time and other publications.

After AOL acquired Netscape in late 1998, Andreessen went on to found Opsware with Ben Horowitz, Tim Howes, and In Sik Rhee.

Originally named Loudcloud, the company provided computing, hosting and software services to consumer facing internet and e-commerce companies.

Netscape was acquired in 1999 for $4.3 billion by AOL.

Andreessen's hiring as its chief technology officer was contingent on the completion of the acquisition.

The same year, he was named to the MIT Technology Review TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.

Loudcloud sold its hosting business to EDS and changed its name to Opsware in 2003, with Andreessen serving as chairman.

Between 2005 and 2009, Andreessen and longtime business partner Ben Horowitz separately invested a total of $80 million in 45 start-ups that included Twitter and Qik.

The two became well-known as super angel investors.

Acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007, it was one of the first companies to offer software as a service and to attempt cloud hosting.

On July 6, 2009, Andreessen and Horowitz announced their Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

The firm had been scrutinized among several other venture capital firms for lack of diversity in its workforce.

In an interview with New York Magazine, Andreessen stated the diversity discussion was valid, however, he believed the firm, as well as other venture capital firms of Silicon Valley, had been wrongly accused of intentionally discriminating against women and people of color.

When asked specifically about the critique of ethnic and gender diversity in Silicon Valley, Andreessen responded that the issues were the "same thing."

Andreessen Horowitz began with an initial capitalization of $300 million, within three years the firm grew to $2.7 billion under management across three funds.

On September 1, 2009, an investor group that included Andreessen Horowitz acquired a majority stake in Skype at a valuation of $2.75 billion, which was considered risky.

In 2010, the firm assisted Silicon Valley attorney Ted Wang in creating the first free standardized seed round financing documents, the Series Seed Documents.

The deal paid off in May 2011 when Microsoft bought Skype for $8.5 billion.

In 2012, Andreessen Horowitz's portfolio holdings included Facebook, Foursquare, GitHub, Pinterest, Twitter, and Honor, Inc.