Andreessen: Part-time professor founders are top failure mode for university spinouts
Marc Andreessen · Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon · Jul 15, 2017 · at 23:28
Marc Andreessen, co-founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, discusses the primary failure mode of academic technology transfer and university startup spinouts.
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“There's a very clear failure case which is the dominant failure case that I think that we see which is The professor has the idea. The professor starts the company but with no intention of going full-time at the company. The professor runs the company or gets it started for a year or on an interim basis or on a part-time basis. Gets associated with some seed investor or some second-tier venture capital firm that goes out and finds a professional, a mediocre professional CEO. The professor then is like, okay, my job is done. Professor goes back to teaching. And then the company just drifts and ultimately falls over and dies.”
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