How to make Silicon Valley
What does it take for an innovation ecosystem to develop? An ecosystem like Silicon Valley? This is an eternally fascinating question and a particularly important one. There are many contributors to the creation of Silicon Valley. I'm just discovering the first few.
I mentioned the "traitorous eight" in a post last week. The set of people who quit Shockley Semiconductor to start Fairchild Semiconductor. Other than Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, there was another important Silicon Valley figure among the eight. That man was Eugene Kleiner.
Eugene Kleiner would go on to co-found Kleiner Perkins, one of the Valley's most important venture capital firm. In fact, the first one that set up office on the now famous Sand Hill Road. And who was Perkins? John Perkins was a general manager at Hewlett Packard, the company whose "garage shed" founding is now a cliche in startup circles. Kleiner even contributed a hundred thousand dollars of his own money to as seed capital when Noyce and Moore started up Intel.
And do you know who else worked at Fairchild? Don Valentine! The founder of Sequoia. Don Valentine spent seven years there building up their sales force.
Finally, an interesting coincidence. Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, VC giants of the valley, were both founded in 1972.
Of course, there are other foundational figures, including Frederick Terman, dean at Stanford University who is considered the father of Silicon Valley. What he did that led almost directly to the creation of "Silicon Valley" is a lesson for another time.
A detailed study of that history perhaps holds deep lessons for any country looking to bootstrap such a powerful ecosystem.