A few years ago, Marc Andreessen wrote a very influential article in which he claimed that software was “eating the world.” We’re now more than five years since he said that about the startup community. And so it’s worth asking whether his vision of the future came true.
The world has changed a lot since 2011. We’ve seen a rebounding in the global economy and renewed optimism. Following the US elections, stocks have risen to record levels. And relations between countries appear to be improving. Much of the growth we’ve seen in industries across the West appears is driven by the remarkable improvements in software.
Let’s take a look at how software has transformed today’s economic landscape.
Online Retail
Andreessen claimed that Amazon was primarily a software company. What made the company great wasn’t its distribution or its warehouses. Plenty of other companies had done all that before. What made the company great was its software engine that made it possible to sell practically anything you want online.
Today clothing ERP software is going mainstream. Startups all over the world can benefit from the type of systems that Amazon developed in-house. Take Stitch Fix, for instance. Today, Stitch Fix is one of the world’s fastest growing fashion outlets. It’s using software to attack the problem of having to go to a store to try on clothes. It’s rebelling against the idea that customers need to go to a poorly lit fitting room to try on a new suit or dress. Instead, it’s looking at how software can be used to make specific recommendations for customers. In other words, it wants to be able to curate its clothing offering, based on customer characteristics.
Music Industry
Andreessen also predicted that software would eat the music industry. He said back in 2011 that the music industry would become nothing more than a content creator for software platforms. iTunes, Pandora and Spotify, he said, would come to dominate the music scene, obliterating the power of the music industry.
Just as Andreessen predicted, these companies have continued to chug along, coming to dominate the market. But they’ve also been joined by a host of new hardware startups seeking to reshape how we consume music. Take Sonos, for instance. The company is looking at ways to use software to make your entire house’s music system smart. It wants people to be able to stream music from their devices, no matter where they are. The company is using Bluetooth technology to make it a reality.
Gaming Industry
Andreessen predicted that entertainment in the future would be dominated by the gaming industry. Gaming is, after all, just software. Back when Andreessen made his prediction, Zynga was the fastest growing game maker. They were the company behind Farmville, which was popular at the turn of the decade. Now the company has fallen on hard times. But the gaming industry as a whole has continued to expand. Top companies are the ones capitalising on online-only gaming software. This software requires gamers to be hooked up to an external server at all times. It makes updating games easier, and it also ensures that games can’t be pirated.