English: Co-founder of , at the Tech Crunch40 conference. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Marc Andreessen, a well-known venture capitalist from Silicon Valley, recently endured attacks from Carl Icahn. Due to a possible conflict of interest, Icahn asked Andreessen to step down from his respected position as one of EBay's board members.

In a strange turn of events, Icahn attempted to gain support for his nominees by encouraging fellow shareholders to take his side . He was concentrating his efforts on governing the corporate structure of EBay. In short, he is trying to convince this auction giant to spin off PayPal, their successful payments business.