Lessons in spin: Marc Andreessen puts his shoes back on
Future has-beens, listen up: When dealing with your inevitable fall from fame (when the bubble pops, or you screw up your deal with Viacom, or you waste your investors' money on a jet), remember to spin it as a relief. That's what Marc Andreessen learned after he sold Netscape to AOL and watched the company kill it.
"There was a time when I couldn't go to a party without getting pushed against a wall by 30 people," he tells the Wall Street Journal. "I basically stopped going out."
That's right, he stopped being popular by choice, 'cause the people were all up ons, wanting attention from the man who posed barefoot on the cover of TIME. Mentally, he couldn't afford his rock-and-roll lifestyle.
Of course, if you're going to pull that "I want to run two obscure companies without media attention" line, it helps if one of those companies really is doing well, and the other is cute enough to entertain interviewers.
