Bloomberg Television’s Emily Chang sat down with investor Marc Andreessen today on Bloomberg West. When Chang asked Andreessen whether he has any regrets about any of Andreessen Horowitz’s investments or what companies he wished he invested in, his one answer was mobile payments company Square.
He tells Chang in the video clip (towards the end): “The biggest one that we’re still kicking ourselves over is probably Square. I think Jack Dorsey is one of the most phenomenal founder-CEO’s in the industry and we probably made a huge mistake on that one when he first came in. We overthought the deal and we probably just should have said Jack Dorsey, check. And write the check. That’s probably the big one.”
Square has raised $168 million in funding from Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures, SV Angel, First Round Capital, Visa and a host of angel investors.
Andreessen also commented on all those Yahoo rumors (which he sort of shed light on back in December as well).
He told Chang: “We were invited along with Silver Lake…Silver Lake and my firm Andreessen Horowitz partnered on a proposal to Yahoo, we were invited in after Carol Bartz was fired by the board, to make a proposal on becoming involved as a private equity investor and as potential board members. We had a series of discussions with them but ultimately the company decided not to pursue that path. So, at least as of right now, there is no chance of that happening.”
We’ve embedded the interview below. It’s worth a watch.