Tech

SURPRISE: Silicon Valley Hero Marc Andreessen Is Backing Romney

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Marc Andreessen
Joanne Wan

Silicon Valley has a reputation for leaning left.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Google exec Marissa Mayer have hosted big fundraisers for Democratic candidates.

Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt is a huge Obama booster.

Steve Jobs offered to help make commercials for Obama's 2012 campaign.

But the truth is that there is also a very strong libertarian strain in the Valley.

Sometimes libertarian-leaning Silicon Valley titans even almost allow themselves to be called Republicans.

Take Marc Andreessen, for example.

He has contributed $100,000 to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's campaign via a SuperPAC.

Andreessen is the biggest fish there is in Valley right now. He's on the board of Facebook and HP. He's already a huge investor in startups through his VC firm, Andreessen Horowitz, and he still has billions more to seed.

In this CNBC clip, Andreessen says he supports Romney because he is a "dyed-in-the-wool" businessman who understand that "regulations" get in the way of business. 

Andreessen says he used to support Democrats – like Clinton/Gore, for example – but "I turned 40 last year and so I figured it was time to make the switch."

It should be said that Andreessen disagrees with Romney's views on China.

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Nicholas Carlson was Business Insider's global editor-in-chief from 2017 to 2024, overseeing its emergence as a National Magazine Award, Emmy, SABEW, and Pulitzer Prize-winning global news organization with more than 500 journalists reaching 200 million readers and viewers each month.Before that, he was Business Insider's chief correspondent.Carlson is also the author of "Marissa Mayer and the Fight To Save Yahoo!"He was an Executive Producer of "Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV," which, during its debut week, was the most-watched television show on any streamer and the most-watched show in Max history.His investigative reporting rewrote the histories of Facebook, Twitter, and Groupon. He also wrote the award-winning features "The Truth About Marissa Mayer: An Unauthorized Biography" and "THE COST OF WINNING: Tim Armstrong, Patch, And The Struggle To Save AOL."Longform.org named "THE COST OF WINNING" the best long-form business story of 2013.Carlson's coverage of Yahoo won Digiday's award for Best Editorial Achievement of the year in 2014.In 2015 Carlson wrote a New York Times Magazine cover story, "What Happened When Marissa Mayer Tried to Be Steve Jobs." It was a finalist for a Mirror Award for best in-depth/enterprise reporting.Carlson began his journalism career at InternetNews.com and then Gawker Media's Valleywag. He went to Davidson College. Disclosure: Nicholas is an investor in private and public companies and adheres to Insider Inc's Conflict of Interest policy, which you can read here.