Out with the old, in with the new

A great conversation today on Charlie Rose -- with Marc Andreessen, the cofounder of Ning and Netscape. So many interesting points I had to watch it twice. Wanted to get some of it down.

1) If you can get a company to scale, you can figure out a way to make a business out of it.

A corollary to this is that all these sites -- Facebook, YouTube, etc are massively undermonetized assets. These are just huge distribution channels; Viacom should have worked with YouTube rather than fight them. Music industry should have embraced Napster rather than killing it.

2) Newspapers should just face the future and stop printing on paper. Go entirely on the internet.

Thinking about this, I agree -- put all their resources into the net now, while they still have brand value.

3) Innovation on the net accelerates -- every layer of new technology makes another layer of innovation possible.

This suggests that the reason why innovation isn't being monetized on a large scale is that it doesn't need to be. Innovation is *cheaper*.

4) We [Silicon Valley] will be a tragic beneficiary to financial crisis because TV/radio/print will run out of money where the internet will benefit.

5) We don't need to separate good banks from bad banks. We just need new banks. He talks about this PayPal notion of 'bill me later' which allows one to get instant credit per-purchase, rather than have a credit card and/or credit limit.

6) Good things often occur when ideas are stolen and IP rights are ignored. There's a lot of turnover, ideas are constantly being reinvented and usually the tech guys end up working for the new company, on new ideas.

7) most internet companies have a quick turnaround, they're bought up within 1-3 years. Starting a long-term company, with a long-term vision and a long-term strategy, is a different enterprise entirely.
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