[saosebastiao]

What are you asking his advice for?

I'm not a VC industry insider, but I've spent enough time in the industry as a peon analyst to see the industry for what it is. I've written before about how nearly all VC partners are ridiculously conservative bandwagoners (they only invest if someone else invests), with the sole (to my knowledge) exception being Marc Andreessen. There might be other exceptions out there, but the thing I always admired about him is his ability to fully commit to a business without any social proof. And I believe that this attribute is what makes him successful. If you are taking his advice on whether to invest in something, it's probably worth the $100.

Never worked with him personally, but I'm sure his business advice is gonna be pretty sound even if I don't know how it rates relative to other VCs. But I think the real point is that it is important to know what you're asking him about before anybody can tell you if it is a good idea. You wouldn't ask him about plumbing, right?

[wocg]

Right, it's a business-related question. $100 to me is worth a lot more than it is to him, so I just wondered whether what I'd be getting would be worth what I'm spending. If the response is anything like the Ben Horowitz example above, I'm thinking no.

[mahyarm]

If everyone is a bandwagoner, how does the bandwagon start? Without pmarca, would VC grind to a halt?

[saosebastiao]

It's really slow. Someone gets interested, their interest piques someone else's interest. This goes on practically forever until some point where there are 2 or more VCs in a room together and then it becomes "I'll do it if you do it".

They've co-opted a word for this process: syndication. If you ask them what it means, they'll have some flowery language[0] for you. In reality all it means is that they're too chickenshit to invest on merits alone, and really want to know what other people think.

This process drives up pre-money valuations and thereby reduces returns. By opting out of the process, Andreessen has outsized returns. It's a bigger risk (he has abnormally large potential downsides), but he's good enough of a judge of merit to make it work out phenomenally for him.

[0] http://www.startable.com/2008/10/27/venture-capital-deal-syn...