Marc Andreessen of Netscape fame is ready to bet on Google Glass, in the only way that matters, with boatloads of money. His venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz along with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and Google Ventures have formed Glass Collective to invest as much as $200 million in creating a “brave new world of services and experiences.” According to John Doerr of KPCB “transformations occur when great products, robust APIs, powerful distribution and outstanding entrepreneurs come together.”
Nurturing an Ecosystem for Developers
Now that Google Glass has been designed, developed, produced and is available on a limited basis at $1,500 a pop, it is a platform Glass Collective believes has as much upside as web browsers and cell phones had in their infancy. Andreessen compares Google Glass with innovations in the film industry that brought realistic dinosaurs to life in movies like Jurassic Park and others,vastly improving the experience of cinema goers.
Andreessen believes the combinations of talent and experience the Glass Collective brings to the table will help entrepreneurs who may have excellent ideas but not all of the tools and experience they need to be successful.Some of the funds will come from the firms’ already existing investment portfolios.
On their website Glass Collective provides access to Google Mirror API that will allow developers to build software, services and hardware that integrate with features such as voice activation and augmented reality.
Leveraging Goggle Glass with Innovative Software and Hardware
The jury is still out on how much upside Google Glass has but it is up to visionaries to tell us and show us. According to Andreessen Google Glass:
- will allow the integration of connectivity and information directly into a person’s field of vision as they go about their daily life.
- may possibly replace cell phones and tablets and allow users to feed the Internet with live video and audio from whatever experiences users believe is of value.
- provide a new platform in the same way that the Internet and cell phones did, allowing third-party developers to use it in developing thousands of creative applications for millions of people and improving their lives and the world around them.
Google Glass Another “Jaw Dropping” Innovation
Andreessen, along with Eric Bina, developed Mosaic, the first popular graphical browser for the World Wide Web in 1993. This innovation turned the Internet from an entirely text based interface into a multimedia resource that began to offer sound, pictures, video and more. Andreessen knows all about transformational technologies and believes Google Glass fits the bill.
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