The Investor's Shelf — one person
Marc Andreessen
Co-author of Mosaic and co-founder of Netscape; co-founder and general partner, Andreessen Horowitz
"Why Software Is Eating the World" and the pmarca essays are primary sources that later technology writing quotes directly; he has essays rather than books.
1 books of their own · 42 articles · 188 books they recommend
Books they wrote 1
· 2025 · Standalone edition of the 2023 a16z essay; Andreessen has written no conventional book
Letters
Andreessen writes no letter series and has no letter archive. The closest thing to an archive of his own writing is pmarchive.com, a complete mirror of his defunct blog blog.pmarca.com (2007-2009), maintained by Fictive Kin; all 34 pieces it holds are listed under articles. His newer essays sit on a16z.com under his author page, a16z.com/author/marc-andreessen/, which mixes his own written posts with podcast episodes; the written ones are listed under articles.
Columns 31
- The Pmarca Guide to Startups, Part 2: When the VCs say “no”pmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- The Pmarca Guide to Startups, Part 3: “But I don't know any VCs!”pmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- The Pmarca Guide to Startups, Part 5: The Moby Dick theory of big companiespmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- The Pmarca Guide to Startups, Part 6: How much funding is too little? Too much?pmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- The Pmarca Guide to Startups, Part 7: Why a startup's initial business plan doesn't matter that muchpmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- The Pmarca Guide to Startups, Part 8: Hiring, managing, promoting, and firing executivespmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- The Pmarca Guide to Startups, Part 9: How to hire a professional CEOpmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- The truth about venture capitalists, Part 1pmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- The truth about venture capitalists, Part 2pmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- The truth about venture capitalists, Part 3pmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- How to hire the best people you've ever worked withpmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- Serial entrepreneurs and today's Silicon Valleypmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- Age and the entrepreneur: Some datapmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- Luck and the entrepreneur: The four kinds of luckpmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- The Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivitypmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- Guide to Career Planning, Part 0: Introductionpmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- Guide to Career Planning, Part 1: Opportunitypmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- Guide to Career Planning, Part 2: Skills and educationpmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- Guide to Career Planning, Part 3: Where to go and whypmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- Guide to Big Companies, Part 1: Turnaround!pmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- Guide to Big Companies, Part 2: Retaining great peoplepmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- Why there's no such thing as Web 2.0pmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- Top 10 science fiction novelists of the '00s—so farpmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- Why Ning?pmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- Book of the week: Best book for tech entrepreneurs this yearpmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- The three kinds of platforms you meet on the Internetpmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- Music of the week: Three views of the blues, through jazzpmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- Eleven lessons learned about blogging, so farpmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- OK, you're right, it IS a bubblepmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- Counterpoint: Ben Horowitz on micromanagementpmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
- An hour and a half with Barack Obamapmarchive.com (archive of Marc Andreessen’s blog blog.pmarca.com, 2007-2009)
Articles and essays 3
- The Techno-Optimist ManifestoAndreessen Horowitz, 2023
- It's Time to BuildAndreessen Horowitz, 2020
- Why Software Is Eating the WorldThe Wall Street Journal, 2011
Blog posts 8
- Making a Billion Intelligent Machinesa16z.com, 2026
- Introducing Erik Torenberga16z.com, 2025
- Flowa16z.com, 2025
- The Little Tech Agendaa16z.com, 2024
- AI for Startupsa16z.com, 2024
- The Psychology of Entrepreneurial Misjudgment: Biases 1-6blog.pmarca.com, 2008
- The Pmarca Guide to Startups, Part 1: Why not to do a startupblog.pmarca.com, 2007
- The Pmarca Guide to Startups, Part 4: The only thing that mattersblog.pmarca.com, 2007
Blog
Pmarchive — archive of Marc Andreessen's pmarca blog
Books they recommend 188
Andreessen's reading list has a through-line that isn't immediately obvious: it's a theory of who controls the future and why. The economic-history books establish the baseline; the technology-history layer shows what those conditions produced; science fiction closes the loop by making long-run futures feel visceral. Biography anchors the abstract in individual lives - he gravitates toward subjects who operated at civilizational scale. The psychology and philosophy layer is the most personal: Hayek, Nozick and Taleb form the operating system behind a16z's public positions on regulation, crypto and platform governance, and his 2023 Techno-Optimist Manifesto is largely a remix of this shelf. Recommendations surface through a16z's blog and book pages, the pmarca Substack archive, and long-form interviews.
Book recommendations listed on their Good Books profile 73
Politics and Government 21
Richard Hanania · not in an entry yet aggregator only
David D. Friedman · not in an entry yet aggregator only
James Burnham · not in an entry yet aggregator only
Thomas Sowell · not in an entry yet aggregator only
Biography and Memoir 10
Susan Ronald · not in an entry yet aggregator only
General History 10
Numa Denis Fustel De Coulanges · not in an entry yet aggregator only
Economics 8
Philosophy 6
James Nichols · not in an entry yet aggregator only
Sociology and Culture 5
John Murray Cuddihy · not in an entry yet aggregator only
Tom Wolfe · not in an entry yet aggregator only
Fiction 2
Psychology and Behaviour 1
Business and Management 1
Sport 1
Science 1
War and Strategy 1
Biography of Scientists 1
Technology and Computing 1
Environment and Energy 1
Health and Fitness 1
Religion and Spirituality 1
John Murray Cuddihy · not in an entry yet aggregator only
Company Histories 1
Top 10 science fiction novelists of the '00s—so far (pmarca blog archive) 39
Fiction 39
Superbook reading list 27
Not yet given a topic 7
F. A. Hayek · not in an entry yet
“Hayek's argument that central planning inevitably concentrates power is a bedrock text in Andreessen's political economy. He has referenced it repeatedly to explain his skepticism of regulatory overreach in tech, particularly around cryptocurrency, speech platforms, and AI governance.”
Robert Nozick · not in an entry yet
“Nozick's libertarian philosophy — the minimal state as the only legitimate one — pairs with Hayek in Andreessen's political canon. His 2023 Techno-Optimist Manifesto drew heavily on this tradition, specifically the entitlement theory of property and the critique of redistributive taxation.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb · not in an entry yet
“Taleb's argument that decision-makers must bear the consequences of their decisions aligns with how Andreessen talks about founder-led companies versus hired-manager-run ones. He has praised Taleb's broader framework for puncturing the credentialism of institutions that socialise risk while privatising reward.”
Steven Levy · not in an entry yet
“Steven Levy's 1984 history of the first hacker generation shaped Andreessen's self-conception of what software builders are. He has recommended it as the founding myth of the culture he operates inside — the origin story of why information wants to be free and why the best builders ignore institutional authority.”
Robert A. Caro · not in an entry yet
“Caro's LBJ series is the companion to The Power Broker: it dissects how legislative power is built, traded, and wielded. Andreessen has recommended Caro's work broadly as the best available study of how large institutions actually function versus how they claim to function.”
Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin · not in an entry yet
“Bird and Sherwin's biography of Oppenheimer shows what it looks like to assemble the scientific and organisational resources to push a technology far enough to matter — and what the political consequences of that success can be. Andreessen has recommended it as a study in the relationship between scientists and the state.”
Ron Chernow
“Chernow's biography of Rockefeller is cited in Andreessen's orbit as the best case study in how a completely new industry — oil — gets built from nothing by a founder willing to operate at a scale and with a focus that contemporaries found incomprehensible. The parallels to platform-scale tech companies are explicit in a16z discussions.”
Fiction 4
Neal Stephenson · not in an entry yet
“Stephenson's 1992 novel coined 'metaverse' and depicted a fragmented, privatised future internet decades before the concept was plausible. Andreessen has cited it alongside Cryptonomicon as one of the books that made him believe software would restructure not just commerce but sovereignty itself.”
Neal Stephenson · not in an entry yet
“Stephenson's 1999 novel about cryptography, World War II codebreaking, and a fictional digital currency appears repeatedly in Andreessen's recommendations. He has described it as the book that made cryptocurrency feel inevitable — a rare case where a novel functioned as both a technical and philosophical blueprint.”
Isaac Asimov · not in an entry yet
“Asimov's psychohistory — the idea that the arc of civilisation can be predicted and steered by those who understand its dynamics — is a recurrent frame in how Andreessen talks about technology waves. He and Elon Musk have both cited Foundation as a formative influence on thinking at civilisational scale.”
Frank Herbert · not in an entry yet
“Herbert's novel about resource control, imperial power, and ecological constraint has been cited by Andreessen as a study in how monopoly over a critical resource shapes politics across an entire civilisation. The spice-as-energy-source analogy maps cleanly onto his analysis of compute, semiconductors, and network effects.”
Business and Management 3
Andrew S. Grove
“Grove's strategic-inflection-point model maps directly onto Andreessen's core investing thesis. His 2011 'Software Is Eating the World' essay is essentially this framework applied to every industry simultaneously — the moment of maximum peril is also the moment of maximum opportunity for a fast-moving challenger.”
Clayton M. Christensen
“Christensen's disruption model is probably the single most-referenced intellectual framework in a16z's public writing and podcasts. Andreessen has described it as one of the clearest explanations of why large companies systematically fail to see what is coming — and why startups attacking low-end markets are so dangerous.”
Andrew S. Grove
“Andy Grove's operational bible is foundational to how a16z coaches portfolio companies. Andreessen has recommended it in multiple interviews as the most practical management book ever written, particularly the leverage concept, the manager-as-trainer frame, and the one-on-one structure.”
Economics 2
Adam Smith
“Andreessen treats Smith's division-of-labour insight as the original source code of market economies. He has referenced it in discussions of why specialisation and trade create compounding wealth, and why attempts to short-circuit that mechanism through industrial policy tend to fail.”
Matt Ridley · not in an entry yet
“Ridley's argument that voluntary exchange and specialisation are the engine of human progress aligns closely with the techno-optimist worldview Andreessen formalised in his 2023 manifesto. He has cited Ridley's data-driven optimism as a corrective to the dominant media narrative that things are getting worse.”
General History 2
Jared Diamond
“Diamond's geographic determinism is a foil Andreessen engages with seriously — it provides the environmental frame he then pushes back on with institutional and individual-choice arguments. He has cited it as essential for understanding the baseline before layering on what human agency and technology can change.”
Yuval Noah Harari · not in an entry yet
“Harari's scale of analysis — the entire human species over 70,000 years — matches how Andreessen thinks about technology waves. He recommended it publicly around 2015 as one of the best books on how collective fictions (money, states, corporations) actually work, and why the ability to coordinate around shared narratives is what separates humans from every other species.”
Technology and Computing 2
James Gleick · not in an entry yet
“Gleick's history of how humans learned to store and transmit information — from African drums to Claude Shannon's theorems — is the kind of deep-time framing Andreessen gravitates toward. He has cited it as essential for understanding why software is categorically more powerful than prior general-purpose technologies.”
Walter Isaacson · not in an entry yet
“Isaacson's narrative of computing's pioneers — from Ada Lovelace to the internet — is the accessible entry point Andreessen recommends for understanding how collaboration between theory and engineering actually works. The book reinforces his view that the computer was not invented by one genius but assembled across generations.”
Entrepreneurship and Startups 2
Peter Thiel
“Andreessen has cited Thiel's monopoly thesis repeatedly, and a16z's investment philosophy mirrors it closely — back companies building something genuinely new, not incremental improvements. The section on secrets and the contrarian question ('what important truth do very few people agree with you on?') is particularly referenced in a16z evaluations.”
Ben Horowitz
“Ben Horowitz is Andreessen's partner at a16z, and this book grew directly out of his blog posts that Andreessen helped shape. It is on the list not for sentiment but because the wartime-CEO framework and the brutally practical advice on firing, hiring, and preserving culture under pressure are how both men think about building companies.”
Politics and Government 1
James Dale Davidson, William Rees-Mogg
“One of Andreessen's most-cited books publicly, especially on cryptocurrency and digital sovereignty. The 1997 prediction that cryptography would allow individuals to route around nation-state taxation and censorship maps almost exactly onto his crypto investment thesis and his views on network states.”
Biography of Scientists 1
M. Mitchell Waldrop · not in an entry yet
“Waldrop's biography of Licklider is a recurring Andreessen recommendation for understanding the ARPA-funded origin of interactive computing and the internet. It shows how visionary government research patronage — distinct from industrial policy — can seed genuinely transformative platforms decades later.”
Biography and Memoir 1
Robert A. Caro · not in an entry yet
“Caro's biography of Robert Moses is on this list because it shows how infrastructure, regulation, and institutional power actually accumulate and calcify over decades. Andreessen has cited it as essential context for understanding why American cities stopped being able to build things — and why the regulatory environment startups face is the product of deliberate political choices.”
Decision Making 1
Donella H. Meadows
“Meadows' primer on feedback loops, stocks, and flows is cited by Andreessen as foundational for understanding why complex systems — markets, platforms, ecosystems — behave counterintuitively. The book makes explicit why optimising one variable in a system often degrades the whole, a lesson he applies to both product design and policy debates.”
Philosophy 1
Nassim Nicholas Taleb · not in an entry yet
“Taleb's concept of antifragility — systems that gain from disorder — is embedded in how Andreessen talks about startups versus large institutions. He has drawn on it to argue that the tech ecosystem's high failure rate is a feature, not a bug: optionality and variance are what produce large positive outcomes.”
Books Andreessen has recommended on X and the a16z blog 24
Biography and Memoir 4
Entrepreneurship and Startups 3
Business and Management 3
Psychology and Behaviour 2
Philosophy 2
Economics 2
Leadership 2
Investing 1
Decision Making 1
Science 1
Politics and Government 1
Sport 1
Health and Fitness 1
@pmarca, companion thread to 'It's Time to Build' 7
Economics 3
George Gilder
“on how economic systems that encourage aggressive entrepreneurship build the most for the benefit of the most”
William W. Lewis
“on how technology-driven productivity growth improves human welfare and creates more jobs and higher wages”
Edward L. Glaeser
“on the central role cities play in our world and why it's so important for us to build them”
Environment and Energy 2
Andrew McAfee
“on how modern technological economies can build more outputs with less inputs”
Stewart Brand
“on why even environmentalists should be pro building, pro cities, pro nuclear, and pro genetic engineering”
Biography of Scientists 1
Financial History 1
Charles R. Morris
“on how four great builders of the 19th century built the world we live in today”
@pmarca, 'Thread: Books I've recently read and recommend' 5
Philosophy 1
Decision Making 1
Philip E. Tetlock
“All pundits and commentators should publish their prediction track records, yet don't. What to pay attention to and what to ignore.”
Politics and Government 1
Bryan Caplan
“The median American is a moderate national socialist – statist to the core on both economic and social policy.”
Financial History 1
David Enrich
“saga of global financial market manipulation, at mind-boggling scale and hiding in plain sight”
Investing 1
Scott Wapner
“"Wall Street"-esque battle between Bill Ackman and Carl Icahn over unlikely target Herbalife.”
The Pmarca Guide to Career Planning, Part 1: Opportunity 3
Financial History 1
Peter L. Bernstein
“see the classic book Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk for more on this”
Decision Making 1
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“One more quote, this time from Nassim Nicholas Taleb in The Black Swan”
Investing 1
Aaron Brown
“To quote Aaron Brown—a legendary Morgan Stanley derivatives trader and poker expert—from his extraordinary book”
The truth about venture capitalists (Part 3), blog.pmarca.com 2
Investing 2
David F. Swensen
“pick up a copy of David Swensen's excellent book Pioneering Portfolio Management, which describes his approach in detail”
David F. Swensen
“Be sure to also pick up a copy of his book for individual investors— Unconventional Success”
The Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity 1
Psychology and Behaviour 1
Eric Abrahamson, David H. Freedman
“This idea comes from a wonderful book called A Perfect Mess”
Luck and the Entrepreneur: The four kinds of luck, blog.pmarca.com 1
Science 1
James H. Austin
“wrote an outstanding book called Chase, Chance, and Creativity … It's the best book I've read on the role of luck, chance, and serendipity”
Dwarkesh Podcast — Marc Andreessen (transcript) 1
Entrepreneurship and Startups 1
William H. Janeway
“He wrote this book, which I really recommend, it's called Doing Capitalism”
Lex Fridman Podcast #458 transcript — Marc Andreessen 1
Sociology and Culture 1
Timur Kuran
“So this is one of the all time great books. Incredible.”
Book of the week: Best book for tech entrepreneurs this year, blog.pmarca.com 1
Entrepreneurship and Startups 1
Steve Blank
“Buy it, read it, keep it under your pillow and absorb it via osmosis.”
The a16z Show — Marc Andreessen with David Senra (transcript) 1
Politics and Government 1
James Burnham
“The book that I always recommend on this topic is called "The Machiavellians," which is this sort of a famous book from the 1940s”
The Pmarca Guide to Startups, Part 7 1
Biography of Scientists 1
Randall E. Stross
“I've recently been reading Randall Stross's marvelous book about Thomas Edison, The Wizard of Menlo Park”
The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Marc Andreessen (#163) 1
Biography and Memoir 1
Neal Gabler
“the author, Neal Gabler, who has written the best biography on Walt Disney. And it's a phenomenal book.”
Where they publish 10
- Top 10 science fiction novelists of the '00s—so far (pmarca blog archive)
- Books recommended by Marc Andreessen
- The Pmarca blog archive
- @pmarca on X
- Superbook reading list
- investorslibrary.substack.com — Marc Andreessen's reading list
- a16z blog and book recommendations
- pmarca Substack archive
- The Techno-Optimist Manifesto
- Tim Ferriss Show — Marc Andreessen (2016)