According to a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) director Marc Andreessen’s venture-capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, sold a third of its Facebook shares last week.
The filing, which can be seen here, shows that Andreessen Horowitz sold 2.28 million Facebook shares at between $49 and $50 per share on November 6. The firm still owns 4.57 million shares in the social networking site.
A spokeswoman for the firm told AllThingsD that Andreessen Horowitz believes its investment in Facebook is a successful one, which is why the company is holding onto a good portion of its shares. Selling some of the Facebook shares allowed Andreessen Horowitz to return money to its investors. “Venture investing involves a lot of experimentation,” Margaret Wennmachers said. “Not all of them work. This one worked. … We’re still feeling very good about Facebook.”
Marc Andreessen was a Facebook director before he co-founded Andreessen Horowitz; AllThingsD said the firm was a relatively late investor in Facebook. Even so, the firm is apparently still profiting from its investment in the site.
Marc Andreessen is a well-known tech investor who is probably most famous for co-authoring the first widely used Web browser, Mosaic. Mosaic was renamed Netscape, and that company’s IPO in 1995 made Andreessen a poster child for young, ambitious Silicon Valley talent. The Mosaic code was used by Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) for Internet Explorer, and Netscape was purchased by AOL (NYSE:AOL) for $4.2 billion in 1999.
Now Andreessen’s venture capital firm invests in the information tech industry. The firm has investments in Facebook rivals Twitter (NYSE:TWTR), Foursquare, and Pinterest. Andreessen has made various lists of the most influential people in Wall Street and the tech industry. Andreessen will remain a member of Facebook’s board and continue to advise Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
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