Table of Contents


1. Introduction. 5

2. Dream Makers: The Secret Sauce behind Silicon Valley’s Success                 (1950-2010) 16

3. The Pioneers: Stanford University, Radio Engineering, the Melting Pot, and      Artistic Genesis (1900-25) 29

4. The Scouts: Electrical Engineering, Nuclear Engineering, the Navy, and the Culture of Innovation (1925-40) 39

5. Partners: Bill Hewlett, Dave Packard, and Fred Terman at HP and Stanford   (1930-1970) 47

6. The Moles: Military Boom, Artistic Boom, and Economic Boom (1941-48) 62

7. Early Funders:  The Early History of Venture Capital (1900-59) 68

8. Engineers: The Stanford Industrial Park, Inventions, Discoveries, and      Rebellion  at the Dawn of the Computer Age (1949-61) 80

9. Graybeard Funders:  Venture Capital in its Clubby Days (1955-78) 103

10. Hippies: Fairchild, the Spin-offs, the Minicomputer, Artistic Creativity,          and Social Revolution (1961-68) 113

11. Chipmakers: Intel’s Creation and Re-Creation (1965-98) 130

12. The Geniuses: DRAM, Intel, SRI, PARC, Arpanet, and Utopia (1968-71) 142

13. Lab Inventors: Xerox PARC and the Innovation Machine (1969-83) 158

13. Helpers: Lawyers and Investment Bankers   (1970-2000) 173

14. The Hobbyists: The Microprocessor, Computer Kits, Ethernet, Internet,           the Alto, Genetic Engineering (1971-75) 184

15. The Entrepreneurs: Apple, Oracle, Unix, Biotech, Alternative Music, and Spirituality (1976-80) 201

16. Database Lords: Larry Ellison and his Lost Co-Founders (1977-2010) 219

17. The Warriors: Personal Computers, Killer Applications, and SUN              (1980-83) 232

18. Early Failures: Good Ideas which Arrive Early are Bad Products                 (1980-94) 247

19. Magicians:  Steve Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field and Apple Computer         (1976-2010) 253

20. The Artists: New Paradigms of User-Computer Interaction, Open    Architectures, Cisco, Synthetic Biology, and Cyberculture (1984-87) 270

21. The Startups: Fabless Manufacturing, Networking, Mobility, and           Nanotech       (1987-90) 287

22. The Surfers: World-Wide Web, Netscape, Yahoo, Multimedia, and      Bioinformatics (1990-95) 301

23. Funder Builders: The Heyday of Venture Capital (1978-2000) 320

24. Dot.com Failures: Startups that Went Bust in the Tech Boom (1991-2000) 330

25. The iBoomers: Google, Hotmail, Java, the Dotcoms, High-speed Internet, Greentech (1995-98) 338

26. The Other Boomers: The Y2K Bug, Wi-Fi, Personal Digital Assistants, and DNA Mapping (1995-98) 358

27. Googlers: From Search Startup to Big Brother (1995-2010) 368

28. Monopolists: eBay, Google, Facebook, and the Network Effect                   (1998-2010) 377

29. The Survivors: Paypal, Wikipedia, and Genomics (1999-2002) 393

30. Lost Funders:  Venture Capital Struggling in the Aughties (2001-10) 410

31. Aughties Failures: Startups that Died of Indigestion      (2001-10) 415

32. The Downsizers: Facebook, YouTube, Web 2.0, and Tesla (2003-06) 421

33. The Sharks: the iPhone, Cloud Computing, Location-based Services,          Social Games, and Personal Genomics (2007-10) 437

34. Conclusions. 467

35. A Timeline of Silicon Valley. 477

36. Bibliography. 496

Errata and Additions (2011)