It used to be that 90% of the time, you accessed stuff only on your computer’s local network. Then in 1993 at the University of Illinois, Marc Andreessen developed Mosaic, the first internet browser, which allowed users to wander around the World Wide Web 90% of the time. He moved to Silicon Valley and founded Netscape. Mr. Andreessen is now a general partner at a top-decile venture-capital firm, better than 90% of its peers. Andreessen Horowitz recently raised $9 billion in new funds.
Last week I spent some time sitting on Mr. Andreessen’s back porch pondering the magic of 90% and how it created Silicon Valley and continues to rule it. “In venture capital, you think a lot about so-called adverse selection,” Mr. Andreessen says. “ ‘Why am I so lucky as to be the person you’re trying to raise money from?’ You want to get to positive selection, the best people coming to you.”
But how? Mr. Andreessen starts with the replication crisis in scientific studies, especially in psychology—over half of studies can’t be replicated. I suggest “studies show” are the two most dangerous words in the English language. Mr. Andreessen quickly adds, “The corollary is ‘experts say.’ ”
Mr. Andreessen’s friend in the scientific research world told him about a historical study of heart and lung drugs that were approved but were not effective. Mr. Andreessen learned that “one of the things you do to counter a replication crisis is a ‘preregistration of hypothesis’—instead of pretending after the fact that you have a hypothesis, that you’re cherry-picking data to prove.” The result of this preregistration? There were fewer new drugs approved because researchers could no longer fudge the data. “Of course, what this implies is that most drugs that are already on the market today probably don’t work.” His friend agreed and said forget 50%, it’s 90% of research that is bad to begin with.
Then Mr. Andreessen says, “I had heard of this, aha, Sturgeon’s law!” Theodore Sturgeon (1918-85) was a science-fiction author annoyed that people were saying all sci-fi was bad and wanted to stand up for the 10% that was good, saying, “90% of everything is crap.” Mr. Andreessen says “90% of music is crap.” The same is true of “paintings, writing, TV shows and movies.” I would add ideas, stocks, opinions, politicians—the list goes on.
That is “the nature of creative work. There are only a few people in each field that know what to do,” Mr. Andreessen says.
