Marc Andreessen to CNBC: Facebook, Yelp, LinkedIn... No "90's Startups!

Marc Andreessen's believes the current crop of internet IPOs bears no comparison to the late nineties Dot Com crash. According to the co-founder of Netscape Communications, Facebook and LinkedIn LNKD are examples of a great crop of companies that were established following the sustained nuclear winter that came afterwards. Mr. Andreessen argues his point of view on both technical and fundamental grounds. He notes to CNBC's SquakBox that today's IPO scene is as far from a 1999 deja vu, as tech companies trade at 30-year lows to industrials, which was not the case at the dawn of the last millennium. He notes that investors still harbor some trauma from that period, but that reluctancy is not based on the companies' fundamentals. The market is vastly different today, Marc Andreessen thinks. He points that his browser wars with Microsoft MSFT were over about 50 million web users at the time, whereas today, the Internet population is over 2 billion and counting. As such, company valuations are not based on generous earning multiples, but on fundamentally sound monetization premises. To this, he points at companies that go from nothing to a billion dollars in revenue in record time.

When asked on his criteria to support Internet start-ups, Andreessen's optimal wish list would include both a great idea and a good operator. He says he does not get to invest nearly as much in the over 1,500 great ideas that are pitched to his investment group for seed money due to practical considerations.

However, he notes that when a great idea comes in combination to a strong leader that can build out the idea and transition into a CEO role afterwards, that gets his support to the hilt. He labels this combination as the model of Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, and now Mark Zuckerberg. That said, in lieu of a strong operator, a great idea can still result in a great company when the right operator is selected once the original founder chooses to step back from daily executive responsibilities in favor of core interest. He points to the Eric Schmidt example at Google GOOG or Meg Whittman's at Hewlett Packard HPQ. Marc Andreessen sits on the board of Facebook, eBay EBAY, and Hewlett-Packard among others.