Most people think that creating innovative products relies on 'trend-spotting' and on reacting quickly to demands. But that is reactive. You can have a much bigger impact if you're willing to shape the future.
This is why Doug Leone quoted is wrong when he refers to the PC and the iPhone as black swans, because they were not. They were products attempting to shape the future. Marc has an uncanny talent at detecting what startup may shape the future and creating a set of financial tools to ensure that market acceptance can happen.
This talent is what makes A16Z so amazing - they are so different from the average bean-counting VCs, whose sets of tools are focused on financial exits and powerplays inside boards.
Yeah but history is littered with products that failed at shaping the future (Apple Newton, Web TV, Early VR headsets). The black swan part is that few could have predicted the iPhone or the PC would succeed.
The funny thing about all the products you listed is that later iterations of these concepts have made (or are now about to make, in the case of VR) major impacts. Perhaps part of the reason these products failed to "shape the future" was because they didn't have the business and financial backing that can be offered by firms like Andreessen-Horowitz.
This talent is what makes A16Z so amazing - they are so different from the average bean-counting VCs, whose sets of tools are focused on financial exits and powerplays inside boards.