andreessen

Uh-oh. Just a month after Gina Bianchini, co-founder of build-a-social-network service Ning, departed the company, it's cutting 40 percent of its staff and axing its free, ad-supported service.

Bianchini had co-founded Ning with Valley legend Marc Andreessen, and it had raised $119 million in venture capital, including a whopping $60 million round in early 2008 that Andreessen famously characterized as a stockpile for the "nuclear winter" that would help get it through the economic recession.

Jason Rosenthal, the Ning COO who took over as CEO from Bianchini, sent an e-mail memo to company staffers on Thursday that … Read more

Two years after selling his software company to Hewlett-Packard, Marc Andreessen has joined the PC giant's board of directors.

HP announced the appointment, effective immediately, on Thursday. In a statement, HP's chairman and CEO Mark Hurd described Andreessen as "a software pioneer whose leadership has helped shape the Internet...Marc's entrepreneurial background and industry expertise will be a welcome addition to the HP board of directors."

Andreessen and HP's relationship goes back several years, culminating with HP's purchase of Opsware for $1.6 billion in 2007. Since then, Andreessen, best known as the … Read more

The newly formed Andreessen Horowitz venture fund has its first outside recruit, and it's a Googler.

Ronny Conway, son of prominent Silicon Valley investor Ron Conway, is leaving his position at Google Ventures to join Netscape and Ning founder Marc Andreessen and partner Ben Horowitz in August, according to TechCrunch.

Conway had been at Google for six years, but Google Ventures, where he was an associate, was established earlier this year. Google Ventures' first major investment was in e-commerce start-up Pixazza.

Andreessen Horowitz first announced its new $300 million fund several weeks ago.

PASADENA, Calif.--Marc Andreessen is known more for building companies rather than funding them, but he said he is looking forward to proving his chops in the latter category.

Andreessen, who launched his $300 million Andreessen Horowitz venture capital fund earlier this month, said Wednesday at Fortune's Brainstorm: Tech conference that he has a lot of "directly relevant" experience that will help attract start-ups.

There are not that many great companies started each year, he said. Andreessen noted that there are probably 15 companies created a year that go on to produce $100 million a year in … Read more

Today: Windows 7 news, a new venture fund from the creator of the Mosaic browser, ABC goes live on Hulu, Toyota says yes to plug-in cars, and a short conversation about URL shortening services with CNET writer Stephen Shankland.

Today's stories:

Will Windows 7 be finalized next week?

IE market share plummeting! (Or is it?)

Marc Andreessen launches new venture fund

EMC raises bid for Data Domain

ABC content starts arriving on Hulu

Report: Toyota to mass produce plug-ins in 2012

Best Buy shifts into electric vehicles sales

Large Hadron Collider grid stress-tested… Read more

Facebook board member Marc Andreessen, who just launched a new venture fund, said in an interview with Reuters (published Monday) that he expects the company's revenue to be in excess of $500 million in 2009, and that in five years it'll be well into the billions.

"Generally speaking, people who are selling their stock in Facebook now are making a mistake," he told Reuters regarding the fact that since an initial public offering is still a ways off, Facebook is permitting some employee stock sales to Digital Sky Technologies, the Russian firm that invested $200 million in the site in May. … Read more

Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape and co-founder of Opsware, and Ben Horowitz, also co-founder of Opsware, are launching on Monday a new venture fund, cleverly named Andreessen Horowitz (previous story). The fund's mission is financially broad but technologically narrow. Andreessen told me the $300 million fund will invest from $50,000 to $5 million in start-ups, which means it's part angel fund and part typical venture capital firm.

Technologically, Andreessen is keeping things in one wheelhouse: his. "We're ruling out products we don't understand," he says. So no clean tech, no energy start-ups, no … Read more

Sometime on Thursday, the one millionth site was created on Ning, the build-your-own-social-network company that was co-founded by Silicon Valley baron Marc Andreessen. It launched just over two years ago.

Ning now has 22 million registered users, about 6.1 million of whom are considered active. Out of the million networks, about a fifth are currently active.

While these numbers are still small compared with the likes of Facebook (on whose board Andreessen sits) it's impressive considering Ning lost 20 percent of its page views in December when it chose to shut down networks containing porn and other adult content. … Read more

Marc Andreessen is adding venture capitalist to the growing list of titles he wears in the tech world, which includes serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and browser technology pioneer, according to a report in peHUB.

Andreessen is launching the venture fund with Ben Horowitz, a former Netscape veteran and co-founder of Opsware, two companies that Andreessen co-founded, the report states.

The venture fund is the latest evolution to the angel investment relationship Andreessen and Horowitz share. Last year, for example, the pair were angel investors in mobile video service Qik and virtual world company Metaplace.

And Thursday night, Andreessen made an … Read more