Netscape Founder Andreessen Joins HP Board

Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape and a number of other companies, was named to HP’s board of directors, making him the 11th member

Marc Andreessen, a co-founder of Netscape Communications, a pioneer in Web browsing, is the latest member of the board of directors at Hewlett-Packard.

HP announced on 17 Sept that Andreessen will be the 11th board member. He already serves on the boards of eBay and Facebook.

Mark Hurd, HP’s chairman and CEO, praised Andreessen “Marc Andreessen is a software pioneer whose leadership has helped shape the Internet,” Hurd said in a statement. “Marc’s entrepreneurial background and industry expertise will be a welcome addition to the HP board of directors.”

Andreessen is no stranger to HP. In 2007, HP bought Andreessen’s company, data center automation software maker Opsware, for about $1.6 billion (£989m). He was co-founder and board chairman for Opsware.

He is co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, a $300 million venture fund, and co-founder and chairman of Ning, an online platform for enabling people to build their own social networks.

He also has served as CTO for AOL and was the co-author of Mosaic, an early Web browser.