Marc Andreessen, cofounder of Netscape and general partner of Silicon Valley’s leading venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, enjoys a formidable reputation as one of the most powerful venture capitalists in the world. A recent New Yorker profile reveals the personal side of Silicon Valley’s safe-made billionaire investor.
The most touching part of the story is how Andreessen met his wife Laura Arrillaga, daughter of the famous real estate developer John Arrillaga.
The two met in 2005 at a New Year’s Eve dinner hosted by an investor in eHarmony. In their first meeting the couple ended up talking to each other for hours and would exchange 17 e-mails the following day.
Laura Arrillaga was taken with Andreessen, who matched most of her criteria for as mate, which included his intelligence, great coding skills, sense of humour – and being bald!
Andreessen was equally intrigued by her, but had some apprehensions saying, “she was spectacular! My biggest concern was that she wanted to live a jet-set life.”
Laura managed to put his apprehensions to rest when she described her idea of an ideal evening in one their initial email exchanges. She said that her perfect evening was to, “Stay home, do e-mail, make an omelette, watch TV, take a bath, go to bed.”
On their second date Andreessen gave her “a twenty-five-minute monologue on why we should go steady, with a full intellectual decision tree in anticipation of my own decision tree.” To her, his speech sounded a lot like a presentation a start-up entrepreneur would give to a venture capitalist. But the pitch did work and the couple decided to get married 9 months after their first encounter.
Marc Andreessen, together with his business partner Ben Horowitz, runs Andreessen Horowitz, widely regarded as the most successful venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. Presently he sits on the board of directors of such large corporations as Facebook, eBay, and HP.
