marc andreessenSpeaking of great profile pieces today, The New Yorker‘s May 18 edition features a super-lengthy profile piece on Marc Andreessen.

You can read the whole thing online today. In the article, author Tad Friend covers the life and times of the larger-than-life Andreessen, giving a behind-the-scenes look at the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z.

Friend opens the piece with this colorful description of Andreessen: “Forty-three years old and six feet five inches tall, with a cranium so large, bald, and oblong that you can’t help but think of words like ‘jumbo’ and ‘Grade A.’ ”

It’s a pretty fascinating read, almost like a rapid-fire David Mamet play, filled with proclamations, swear words, and plenty of wheeling and dealing. As the New Yorker reports, more than 3,000 startups “approach a16z with a ‘warm intro’ from someone the firm knows. A16z invests in fifteen.”

Wow, 15 out of 3,000. Here are a few more fun facts from the article:

About the dynamic between Andreessen and partner Ben Horowitz:

“In 1996, when Horowitz was a Netscape product manager, he wrote a note to Andreessen, accusing him of prematurely revealing the company’s new strategy to a reporter. Andreessen wrote back to say that it would be Horowitz’s fault if the company failed: ‘Next time do the fucking interview yourself. Fuck you.’ Ordinarily, relationship over. ‘When he feels disrespected, Marc can cut you out of his life like a cancer,’ one of Andreessen’s close friends said. ‘But Ben and Marc fight like cats and dogs, then forget about it.’ ”

Andreessen tweets. A lot.

“He also tweets a hundred and ten times a day, inundating his three hundred and ten thousand followers with aphorisms and statistics and tweetstorm jeremiads. He says that he loves Twitter because ‘reporters are obsessed with it. It’s like a tube and I have loudspeakers installed in every reporting cubicle around the world.’ ”

On advising Mark Zuckerberg not to sell Facebook to Yahoo:

“In 2006, Yahoo! offered to buy Facebook for a billion dollars, and Accel Partners, Facebook’s lead investor, urged Mark Zuckerberg to accept. Andreessen said, ‘Every single person involved in Facebook wanted Mark to take the Yahoo! offer. The psychological pressure they put on this twenty-two-year-old was intense. Mark and I really bonded in that period, because I told him, ‘Don’t sell, don’t sell, don’t sell!’ ”

Go ahead and give it a look. Good stuff here, at least for the entertainment value.

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