Another fo my recent reading from old Red gerring magazines. The analysis and predictions are great and provide good lessons for our days… In the same feature, October 98, I found small articles about companies we backed at Index. These three companies went public later on… so a small additional piece for nostalgia. Prepare for […]
Silicon Valley is well known for its immigrants, particularly those from Asia (India, China, Taiwan, Korea, etc). AnnaLee Saxenian is famous for her books on the topic. The European migrants are lesser known and I think it is a little unfair. Let me first illustrate it with famous examples and then with statistical data. I […]
Thanks to a conversation with an EPFL colleague, I was recently reminded the early history of Silicon Valley. I knew about Shockley, Fairchild and the Traitorous Eight. I did not know Shockley had been funded by Beckman (thanks Andrea :-)), that was the point of the recent conversation. What is interesting is to have a […]
It’s one of Silicon Valley strongest assets: entrepreneurs do not stay for long in established companies and create new ones. And it is accepted as a fact. Let us just me quote again Richard Newton: “The Bay Area is the Corporation. […When people change jobs here in the Bay Area], they’re actually just moving among […]
Those who follow my blog know I am interested in the history of Silicon Valley, start-ups and venture capital. I had published a while ago data about Kleiner Perkins’ first fund. I’ve been trying ( and I still do) to find data on Sequoia’s first fund (Atari, Apple, Tandem, Altos) without much success [anyone with […]
“What Have VCs Really Done for Innovation?” This is the title of a post by Vivek Wadhwa dated September 20. You can find the full account on Techcrunch. I have to admit I was not happy with the content. Instead of saying immediatly why, I will let you read comments made by others as I […]
I refer again to the excellent Xconomy with the post Paul Graham on Why Boston Should Worry About Its Future as a Tech Hub—Says Region Focuses On Ideas, Not Startups I had to react so I posted my own comment on their site, which I copy here: There is no doubt Paul is right (unfortunately). […]
This is the third book I report on this blog about entrepreneurs. In fact it is the fourth if I include Inside Steve’s Brain (but this one is about a single entrepreneur). The two previous ones were interviews of many, i.e. Betting it all and Founders at Work. The beauty (and at same time weakness) […]
The Man Behind the Microchip is one of the best biographies about technology and entrepreneurship. This book is a pleasure to read from beginning to end. It is full of important facts about Silicon Valley, its history and its development. I will just quote Robert Noyce, the hero of this book, founder of Fairchild and […]
The content in pdf (english version) Le contenu en pdf (version française) Is the world of start-ups misunderstood? This economic phenomenon of major importance, which appeared fifty years ago in Silicon Valley near San Francisco, seems to face scepticism and even suspicion. It may still suffer from the consequences of the excesses of the Internet […]