FADE IN:
SOFTWARE EATS THE WORLD
“In the future, every company will be a software company.” — Marc Andreessen
ONE
THE BROWSER
INT. FARMHOUSE — NEW LISBON, WISCONSIN — NIGHT — 1987
A farmhouse on the flat Wisconsin plains. YOUNG MARC ANDREESSEN (16), impossibly tall for his age, sits at a primitive computer in the corner of the living room. His FATHER, a seed salesman, watches him from the kitchen doorway.
FATHER
Marc, you've been on that thing for six hours. There's chores.
YOUNG MARC
I'm learning BASIC. If I can get good enough at programming, I won't have to do chores for the rest of my life.
FATHER
(sighing)
That's not how life works.
YOUNG MARC
It will be. Computers are going to change everything. And I'd rather be the person writing the software than the person buying it.
MARC (V.O.) (breaking the fourth wall)
I grew up in New Lisbon, Wisconsin. Population two thousand. The nearest bookstore was forty minutes away. The nearest anything was forty minutes away. But we had a computer. And the computer had a modem. And the modem connected me to a world that was infinitely more interesting than Wisconsin. I decided at sixteen that I was going to build something that connected everyone to that world. I just didn't know what it would look like yet.
INT. NCSA — UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS — NIGHT — 1992
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications. A basement lab filled with Unix workstations. MARC (21), now a graduate student, sits next to ERIC BINA, a quiet, brilliant programmer. On their screens: lines of C code. They're building something nobody has asked for.
NCSA. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 1992. The birthplace of the web browser.
MARC
Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web. HTML. HTTP. Hyperlinks. But there's no good way to see it. The existing browsers are text-only. Ugly. No images. No formatting. It's like having a library with no lights.
ERIC
So you want to build a browser with a graphical interface? Images inline with text? Point-and-click navigation?
MARC
I want to build the thing that makes the internet usable by normal people. Not computer scientists. Normal people. My mom. Your dad. Everyone.
ERIC
That's going to be a lot of code.
MARC
Then let's start.
They code through the night. Every night. For months. Pizza boxes pile up. The fluorescent lights never turn off. They call it Mosaic.
INT. NCSA LAB — DAY — JANUARY 1993
Marc and Eric stare at their monitors. On the screen: the first version of Mosaic running on a Unix workstation. A web page loads with text AND images side by side. Hyperlinks you can click. A back button. A URL bar. The modern web, in its infancy.
MARC
(leaning back)
That's it. That's the internet.
ERIC
That's a web browser.
MARC
No. That's the internet. Everything else — email, FTP, Gopher — that was the internet for computer scientists. This is the internet for humanity.
Mosaic was released to the public in early 1993. Within months, web traffic increased by 341,000%. The world would never be the same.
INT. RESTAURANT — PALO ALTO — DAY — 1994
A upscale restaurant. JIM CLARK (49), the founder of Silicon Graphics, sits across from Marc (22). Clark is tanned, silver-haired, and radiating the confidence of a man who's already built one billion-dollar company.
JIM CLARK
You built Mosaic. The most important piece of software since the spreadsheet. And the university owns it. You got nothing.
MARC
I know. That's why I'm here.
JIM CLARK
I want to start a company. A real company. Not a university project. We build a better browser. We add commerce, security, encryption. We turn the web into a platform for business.
MARC
We can't use any of the Mosaic code. The university owns it. We have to build from scratch.
JIM CLARK
Can you do it?
MARC
I can do it better. Mosaic was version one. I know exactly what was wrong with it. Give me six months and a team, and I'll build the browser that makes the internet a mainstream medium.
JIM CLARK
(extending his hand)
Welcome to Netscape.
INT. NASDAQ TRADING FLOOR — NEW YORK — DAY — AUGUST 9, 1995
The trading floor is electric. THE NETSCAPE IPO BANKER stands near the podium, phone pressed to her ear. Marc, now 24, stands beside Jim Clark, watching the screens.
Netscape IPO. August 9, 1995. The company is eighteen months old. It has $16 million in revenue. It is about to become worth $3 billion.
THE NETSCAPE IPO BANKER
We priced at twenty-eight. Opening trade is at seventy-one. Seventy-one dollars a share. For a company that barely has revenue.
JIM CLARK
(grinning)
They get it. They finally get it. The internet is real.
MARC
(watching the number climb)
This changes everything. Every engineer, every programmer, every kid in a dorm room — they just saw that you can build a web company and go public in eighteen months. This is going to start an avalanche.
By the end of the day, Netscape is worth $2.9 billion. Marc Andreessen, twenty-four years old, is on the cover of Time magazine, barefoot, sitting in a golden throne. The internet gold rush has begun.
CUT TO:
TWO
THE WAR
INT. MICROSOFT HEADQUARTERS — REDMOND, WA — DAY — 1995
BILL GATES sits at the head of a conference table. Executives line both sides. On the screen behind him: Netscape's market share chart. Eighty percent of web browsers are Netscape Navigator.
BILL GATES
Netscape is a threat. Not to our browser business — we barely have a browser business. Netscape is a threat to Windows itself. If the browser becomes the platform, then the operating system doesn't matter. If the operating system doesn't matter, Microsoft doesn't matter.
MICROSOFT EXEC
What do you want to do?
BILL GATES
We build Internet Explorer. We give it away for free. We bundle it with every copy of Windows. Every PC that ships in the world comes with our browser pre-installed. Netscape charges forty dollars. We charge zero. Zero always wins.
Microsoft declared war on Netscape. The browser wars had begun.
INT. NETSCAPE HEADQUARTERS — MOUNTAIN VIEW — NIGHT — 1996
The Netscape war room. Engineers work around the clock. Marc paces, coffee in hand, reading intelligence reports about Microsoft's Internet Explorer strategy.
MARC
They're bundling IE with Windows. Every PC ships with it pre-installed. They're telling OEMs that if they pre-install Netscape, they'll lose their Windows license. They're using the monopoly as a weapon.
BEN HOROWITZ
(entering)
Our market share dropped eight points this month. Eight points. If this continues, we're dead in two years.
MARC
We can't outspend Microsoft. They have infinite money. We need a different strategy. Open source. We release the browser code to the world. Free. Let a million developers improve it. If we can't beat them with money, we beat them with community.
BEN
That's... radical. We're giving away our core product?
MARC
The product isn't the browser. The product is the internet. And the internet has to stay open. If Microsoft wins, they'll close it. They'll make the internet a Microsoft product. I will burn Netscape to the ground before I let that happen.
In 1998, Netscape released its browser source code as open source. The project became Mozilla. Mozilla Firefox would later reclaim the browser market from Internet Explorer.
INT. AOL CONFERENCE ROOM — DULLES, VA — DAY — NOVEMBER 1998
Marc sits at a conference table, signing acquisition documents. AOL is buying Netscape for $4.2 billion. The browser wars are over. Microsoft won. But the internet survived.
JIM CLARK
(beside him)
It's not the ending we wanted.
MARC
It's not an ending. It's a transition. The browser isn't the business. The business is building the future on top of the internet. We proved the internet works. Now the question is: what do you build on top of it?
JIM CLARK
What are you going to do?
MARC
I'm going to invest. In every company that answers that question.
INT. LOUDCLOUD / OPSWARE OFFICES — SILICON VALLEY — DAY — 2001
The dot-com bust. Marc and BEN HOROWITZ run Loudcloud, a cloud computing company that is hemorrhaging money as the bubble bursts. They sit in a near-empty office, reviewing layoff lists.
BEN
We have to cut two hundred people. If we don't, we're dead by the end of the quarter.
MARC
I know. Do it today. Rip the Band-Aid off. But Ben — remember this feeling. Remember how it feels to build something and watch it nearly die. Because someday, we're going to help founders avoid this feeling.
BEN
Is that what you want to do? Venture capital?
MARC
Not venture capital the way it exists now. Something different. A firm that actually helps founders. That doesn't just write checks but provides the operational support that we wish we'd had.
Loudcloud pivoted to Opsware and was sold to HP for $1.6 billion in 2007. The experience taught Marc and Ben everything about surviving as a startup. They would use those lessons to build the most important VC firm of the next era.
CUT TO:
THREE
THE FIRM
INT. ANDREESSEN HOROWITZ — MENLO PARK — DAY — 2009
A new office. The sign on the door: a16z. Marc and Ben sit across from each other at a simple table. No mahogany. No original art. Just two men who have been through the fire and decided to help others survive it.
Andreessen Horowitz. Founded July 2009. $300 million initial fund. A venture firm built by founders, for founders.
MARC
Traditional VCs add money and opinions. We add money, recruiting, marketing, business development, executive coaching, and engineering support. We're not investors. We're operators who happen to invest.
BEN
The other VCs are going to hate us. We're charging management fees to build a services organization that makes them look lazy.
MARC
They should hate us. They've been coasting for thirty years. The average VC meets a founder once a quarter and sends an email that says “how can I help?” We're going to actually help.
INT. A16Z CONFERENCE ROOM — DAY — 2010
A young MARK ZUCKERBERG sits across from Marc. Facebook is growing but hasn't yet proven it can generate serious revenue. Most investors are skeptical.
MARC
Facebook has five hundred million users. The advertising revenue will come. The question isn't whether Facebook makes money. The question is whether Facebook becomes the operating system for social interaction.
ZUCKERBERG
It will. But I need board members who understand that. Not board members who want me to ship features to hit quarterly revenue targets.
MARC
I was twenty-four when I took Netscape public. I know exactly what it feels like to have a board that doesn't understand your vision. Join your board? I'll protect your ability to think long-term. That's the most valuable thing I can offer.
Marc Andreessen joined Facebook's board of directors. a16z's early investment in Facebook would generate billions in returns.
INT. MARC'S HOME OFFICE — ATHERTON, CA — NIGHT — AUGUST 2011
Marc sits at his desk writing. The document is an essay for the Wall Street Journal. The title: “Why Software Is Eating the World.”
MARC
(V.O., reading as he writes)
More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services — from movies to agriculture to national defense. Many of the winners are Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurial technology companies that are invading and overturning established industry structures. Over the next ten years, the battles between incumbents and software-powered insurgents will be epic.
He stops. Reads it back. Adds one more line.
MARC
(V.O.)
Software is eating the world.
“Why Software Is Eating the World” was published in the Wall Street Journal on August 20, 2011. It became the defining thesis of the next decade of technology investing.
INT. A16Z PARTNER MEETING — DAY — 2023
A partner meeting at a16z. THE A16Z PARTNER presents investment opportunities in AI, crypto, and bio. Marc listens, asking sharp questions from the head of the table.
THE A16Z PARTNER
The AI opportunity is the biggest we've seen since mobile. Every software company will be rebuilt with AI at the core. It's not a feature. It's a platform shift.
MARC
It's bigger than mobile. Mobile put a computer in your pocket. AI puts a mind in your computer. That changes everything. Every industry. Every job. Every human activity that involves thinking, creating, or deciding. Software ate the world. Now AI eats the software.
BEN
We need to go big. Dedicated AI fund.
MARC
We go all in. The last time we saw a platform shift this big was the internet itself. And I remember exactly what that felt like. It felt like Mosaic. It felt like the first time you load a web page with images and text and hyperlinks and you think: the world is about to change and most people don't know it yet. That's what AI feels like right now. We fund everything that moves.
INT. MARC'S HOME OFFICE — NIGHT
Late at night. Marc sits at his desk, still working. Screens show portfolio company dashboards, draft blog posts, Twitter threads in progress. He is, as always, doing twelve things at once.
He opens a blank document. Types a title: “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.”
MARC
(V.O.)
We are told to be afraid of technology. We are told it will take our jobs, destroy our communities, end our privacy. I reject this. Technology is the solution, not the problem. Every problem we face — disease, poverty, climate, education — has a technological solution. And the only thing standing between us and that solution is the courage to build it.
He types furiously. The farm kid from Wisconsin who built the first browser is still building. Still coding. Still convinced that software will eat the world — and that this is a good thing.
MARC (V.O.) (breaking the fourth wall)
People ask me if I regret anything about the browser wars. About Netscape. About losing to Microsoft. And the answer is no. We didn't lose. The internet won. The browser won. Open standards won. Microsoft had to completely restructure their entire company around the internet that we proved was viable. We didn't beat Microsoft. We made Microsoft irrelevant. And then we made them reinvent themselves around our idea. That's not losing. That's changing the world.
FADE TO BLACK.
Marc Andreessen built Mosaic, the first widely-used graphical web browser, at age 22. Netscape's IPO in 1995 launched the internet era. Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm he co-founded with Ben Horowitz in 2009, manages over $40 billion in assets and has funded Facebook, Airbnb, GitHub, Coinbase, Slack, Lyft, and hundreds of other companies. “Software is eating the world” became the most quoted line in technology investing history. Mozilla Firefox, the descendant of the Netscape browser code Marc open-sourced, is still used by hundreds of millions of people. He is still building. He is still optimistic. He is still hungry.
THE END