Marc Andreessen: The Internet Helps Small Businesses Beat Walmart

Marc Andreessen, the legendary cofounder of Netscape turned tech investor, says workplace apps that run on the Internet are making small businesses just as powerful as big ones.

He's invested in a whole bunch of companies to make that so. His portfolio at Andreessen Horowitz, the venture-capital firm he cofounded, include Okta, Cloudera, Box, GitHub, ItsOn, and Tidemark, he said in an interview with TechCrunch's Alexia Tsotsis.

Ultimately, these software-as-a-service startups mean that a company doesn't need a big IT budget to compete, he says:

"The classic was Walmart versus local retailer, right? Walmart’s advantage in logistics and in pricing and in data analytics was just so great that they could kill small retailers at will. Today all the consumerized enterprise stuff is as easily usable by the small business as it is by the large business. In fact, it’s probably more easily usable by the small business than it is by the large business."

(Disclosure:Marc Andreessen is an investor in Business Insider.)

More From Business Insider

• Your First Look At Kim Dotcom's Newest File-Sharing Site, Mega
  

• What I Learned From John Chambers And Marc Benioff
  

• IBM Exec Explains Why The Company Is Lending Small Businesses $4B To Upgrade Tech