Andreessen: Silicon Valley only built tools from 1950 to 2010
Marc Andreessen · Marc Andreessen: The World Is More Malleable Than You Think · Mar 15, 2026 · at 43:21
Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen explains the structural shift in Silicon Valley from selling software and hardware tools to disrupting incumbent industries directly.
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“Silicon Valley between, call it, 1950 to 2010, was primarily just in the tools business, right? Primarily the companies that, you know, starting with Hewlett Packard, the companies that we all backed and built were basically just building tools, and you'd build a tool like an operating system or a disk drive or something, and you'd sell it to people, and they'd figure out what to do with it.”
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