Andreessen: Synchronous software struggles to build network effects versus asynchronous tools
Marc Andreessen · Marc Andreessen on Inventing The Internet Browser (How We all Access the Internet) · Jun 28, 2024 · at 48:45
a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen analyzes why early real-time collaboration tools struggled to gain network effects compared to asynchronous communication platforms like email.
“To get a real time collaborative system to work, people have to be online at the same time. Yeah. Right. And so you and I are, we're collaborating. We have to be online at the same time and we might be in totally different time zones. And you know, like it's just, it's, so it's hard to get, you know, critical mass for a network effect. Yeah. If you have to be online at the same time, whereas you know, things like email worked if, you know, regardless of when you're online, you know, so-called asynchronous.”
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