90% of Everything is Crap

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One of my favorite thought leaders, Marc Andreessen says, “I had heard of this, aha, Sturgeon’s law!” Theodore Sturgeon (1918-85) was a science-fiction author annoyed that people were saying all sci-fi was bad and wanted to stand up for the 10% that was good, saying, “90% of everything is crap.” Mr. Andreessen says “90% of music is crap.” The same is true of “paintings, writing, TV shows and movies.” 

Who's Marc Andreessen?  

He developed Mosaic, the first internet browser, which allowed users to wander around the World Wide Web 90% of the time. He moved to Silicon Valley and founded Netscape. Mr. Andreessen is now a general partner at a top-decile venture-capital firm, better than 90% of its peers. Andreessen Horowitz recently raised $9 billion in new funds.

Andy Kessler for the Wall Street Journal discusses how venture capitalist Marc Andreessen explains the world with Sturgeon's law.  And part of that law is that 90% of everything is crap.  Love it.

The Death of Traditional Retail and Local Businesses That Don't Go Global

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One of my favorite tech thought leaders, Marc Andreessen (co-founder Netscape), predicts the following:

... Andreessen expects this wave to keep building and high drama to come by the end of the decade. “Retail guys are going to go out of business and e-commerce will become the place everyone buys. You are not going to have a choice,” he says. “We’re still pre-death of retail, and we’re already seeing a huge wave of growth. The best in class are going to get better and better. We view this as a long term opportunity.”

It's worth noting that Andreessen is on the Board of eBay.  His final comment in the article worth highlighting:

“My core theory is that the best software companies will win at retail, so it’ll become increasingly important for these companies to have the best software programmers in the world. And there are a lot more of them in the Valley.”

Read the entire story here.

Small businesses, start your global e-commerce engines!

Read this post (2010) as it relates to the death of certain 'local' businesses: Go Global or Your Business Will Die