Marc Andreessen argues the real curse of entrepreneurship is being too early, not too late. Founders feel late because the idea seems obvious to them, but the world often lacks the infrastructure or readiness. Apple Newton failed in 1989 where iPad succeeded because mobile broadband, screens, and batteries weren't mature yet.
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My experience is the great founders almost always feel like they're too late and you're almost always too early. The reason is because for you, it's become obvious like you've got some idea in your head and like, as far as you're concerned, the world should already work this way, which is why you're pursuing it. And so to you, it's a little bit inexplicable as to why it hasn't happened yet. And there must be 80 other people going after the same idea and it must be just about to happen. And I must be too late, which is actually how I felt with Netscape. I was like, we're too late. In retrospect, we weren't. The reality is you're almost always too early. We almost never see a qualified founder fail because they're too late to market. It's almost always because they're too early to market. And I don't say that critically when we screw up investments, I think that's often the reason as well. I think we're in the exact same boat as the founder in that degree, which is we believe it's going to happen, therefore we invest. And it just turn. It just turns out. The way the history gets written is the world just wasn't ready yet. So I always like to point out, like, the iPad is like this breakthrough product in 2009. And you know, Apple, oh my God, they invent all these things. Well, there was this thing called the Newton 20 years earlier in 1989, if you haven't heard of it, look it up on Wikipedia. It was the iPad 20 years earlier and it was like virtually the same thing. And the world just wasn't ready yet. The technologies weren't in place. You didn't have mobile broadband, you didn't have the high resolution screens, you didn't have the battery technology. They brought the thing to market and it crashed and burned. And it convinced people for 20 years that tablet computing would never work. And then they did it again at the iPad and it worked. I think that's the permanent curse of the entrepreneur.
Yeah, I remember you gave a talk at YC one time and you said one way to figure out if you're not too late is if what you're working on was being hotly covered three, four years ago. You're probably right on time because now the infrastructure and consumer behavior is not caught up to what was exciting in2012,2013.
