Amazon and Google are on a collision course. When I was at eBay, we had a belief that no one was going to compete with us by replicating exactly what we were doing. We had first mover advantages and network effects. Amazon and Yahoo! both launched auction marketplaces in response to eBay’s strong growth, and…
More »For those of you who don’t yet know this about me, I am a basketball fanatic. Twice a week for the past 10 or so years, I’ve organized a basketball game at Stanford. At the end of the year each year, I ask the participants to chip in so we can buy gifts for the…
More »We at a16z believe we are seeing the “creative destruction” of traditional physical retailers by their online competitors. At a high level, this is happening for two reasons. First, e-commerce companies are substantially advantaged in terms of cost structures, particularly in areas like real estate, labor and inventory. Second, we believe that we’re seeing an…
More »Online is clearly taking share from brick and mortar…this is likely to continue —International Council of Shopping Centers, last week America has too many malls. I’ve recently blogged that many traditional brick-and-mortar retailers are being threatened with “economic destruction” by their advantaged online competition. In an interview with Bloomberg TV, anchorwoman Nicole Lapin asked about…
More »Competition, send ‘em south. If they’re gonna drown put a hose in their mouth —Mark Knopfler, Boom Like That If you’re a physical retailer and you sell the same SKU’s as Amazon, you will not have a Happy Holiday this season. Starting with the hoopla around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the media has been…
More »We at a16z could not possibly be more bullish on the prospects for e-commerce, and we believe growth is poised to accelerate. Part of the reason for this is due to competitive market dynamics. As I’ve blogged before, e-commerce players have substantial cost advantages over their physical competitors. They are massively more efficient in terms…
More »Now it seems strange How we used to wait for letters to arrive But what’s stranger still Is how something so small can keep you alive —Arcade Fire, We Used to Wait It’s election season. And since Candy didn’t use my question in the second debate, I thought I’d ask it here: “President Obama and…
More »Joseph Schumpeter said in his theory of “creative destruction” that the “process of industrial mutation…incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.” I believe we’re approaching a sea change in retail where physical retail is…
More »The Net has unleashed unprecedented price transparency across both online and offline worlds. Comparison shopping engines offer convenient price comparison for goods across online retailers, helping consumers easily discover who has the lowest prices online. People are “show-rooming” (i.e., visiting real-world stores to physically evaluate products), but then using their smartphones to research the lowest…
More »We are delighted to announce that the six General Partners of Andreessen Horowitz, with our families, are all committing to donate at least half of all income from our venture capital careers to philanthropic causes during our lifetimes. The reason is simple. We are fortunate to work with some of the best entrepreneurs and technologists…
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