This post is the latest in the “Secret History Series.” They’ll make much more sense if you read some of the earlier ones for context. See the Secret History video and slides as well as the bibliography for sources and supplemental reading.
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By the early 1960’s Lockheed Missiles Division in Sunnyvale was quickly becoming the largest employer in [...]
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In the 1950’s the U.S. Military and the CIA enlisted balloons (some as tall as a 40-story building) as weapons systems targeting the Soviet Union. Throughout the decade they launched a series of Top Secret/codeword balloon projects and thousands of balloons, to gather intelligence about the Soviet Union. The stories of these programs are interesting [...]
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This post is the latest in the “Secret History Series.” They’ll make much more sense if you read some of the earlier ones for context. See the Secret History video and slides as well as the bibliography for sources and supplemental reading.
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The Soviet Union’s detonation of an atomic weapon in 1949 and the start of the Korean [...]
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This post is the latest in the “Secret History Series.” They’ll make much more sense if you read some of the earlier ones for context. See the Secret History bibliography for sources and supplemental reading.
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The Future is Clear – Microwave Valley Forever
In 1956 Hewlett Packard, back then a maker of test equipment was the valley’s largest electronics [...]
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“In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Goodwill.” Winston Churchill
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In March I was the keynote at the In-Q-Tel Venture Capital Conference, giving a talk on the Secret History of Silicon Valley. (In-Q-Tel is the Central Intelligence Agency’s Venture Capital firm in Silicon Valley.)
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The gist of the talk was that [...]
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This post is the latest in the “Secret History Series.” They’ll make much more sense if you watch the video or read some of the earlier posts for context. See the Secret History bibliography for sources and supplemental reading.
This is the second of three posts about the rise of “risk capital” and how it came to be [...]
Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley, Venture Capital | 3 Comments »
This post is the latest in the “Secret History Series.” They’ll make much more sense if you watch the video or read some of the earlier posts for context. See the Secret History bibliography for sources and supplemental reading.
This is the first of two posts about the rise of “risk capital” and how it came to be [...]
Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley, Venture Capital | 3 Comments »
This post is the latest in the “Secret History Series.” They’ll make much more sense if you read some of the earlier ones for context. See the Secret History bibliography for sources and supplemental reading.
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Swords Into Plowshares
After the end of World War II, returning veterans were happy to beat swords into plowshares (and microwave tubes) on the [...]
Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley, Technology | Tagged: Cold War, Electonic Warfare, Fred Terman, Signals Intelligence | 5 Comments »
This post is the latest in the “Secret History Series.” They’ll make much more sense if you read some of the earlier ones for context. See the Secret History bibliography for sources and supplemental reading.
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In the 1950’s Stanford University’s Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL) continued to develop innovative microwave tubes for the U.S. military. This next product, the [...]
Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley | Tagged: Cold War, Electonic Warfare, Fred Terman, Signals Intelligence | Leave a Comment »
This post makes sense in context with the previous post.
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The Korean War catapulted Stanford University’s Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL) into a major player in electronic intelligence and electronic warfare systems. Encouraged by their Dean, Fred Terman, scientists and engineers left Stanford Electronics Research Laboratory to set up companies to build microwave tubes and systems for the military. [...]
Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley | Tagged: Cold War, Electonic Warfare, Fred Terman | 2 Comments »
These next series of posts chronicles the untold story of how one professor returning from one war decides to enlist Stanford University in waging the next one and by accident, laid the foundation for Silicon Valley, venture capital and entrepreneurship as we know it today.
These posts cover two distinct periods – the first, the rise [...]
Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley | Tagged: Cold War, Electonic Warfare, Fred Terman, Steve Blank | 8 Comments »
Excuse the non-Customer Development, non-entrepreneurial post. I can’t get this one out of my head.
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The VENONA Project
One of the most interesting (declassified) stories of cryptography is the deciphering of Soviet communications to their diplomatic missions in the U.S during World War II. What was amazing about these decrypts was the Soviets used one-time pads which [...]
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This is Part VI of how I came to write “The Secret History of Silicon Valley“. This post makes a lot more sense if you look at the earlier posts as well as the video and slides.
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The next piece of the Secret History of Silicon Valley puzzle came together when Tom Byers, Tina Selig and Mark Leslie [...]
Filed under: Air Force, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Technology | Tagged: Electonic Warfare, Fred Terman, Signals Intelligence, Steve Blank, World War II | 16 Comments »
When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
- The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
I always had been curious about how Silicon Valley, a place I had lived and worked in, came to be. And throughout my career as an entrepreneur I kept asking questions of my VC investors and friends; Where did entrepreneurship come from? [...]
Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley, Technology | Tagged: Cold War, Entrepreneurs, Steve Blank | 12 Comments »
This is Part IV of how I came to write “The Secret History of Silicon Valley“.
Read Part III first and it will make a bit more sense.
All You Can Read Without a Library Card
It was 1978. Here I was, a very junior employee of ESL, a company with its hands in the heart [...]
Filed under: ESL, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Technology | Tagged: Bill Perry, Cold War, ESL, Signals Intelligence, Steve Blank | 5 Comments »
This is Part III of how I came to write “The Secret History of Silicon Valley“.
1978. Two years out of the Air Force, serendipity (which would be my lifelong form of career planning) found me in Silicon Valley working for my first company: ESL. If you’re an entrepreneur, ESL is the most important company you’ve [...]
Filed under: ESL, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Technology | Tagged: Bill Perry, Cold War, ESL, Signals Intelligence, Steve Blank | 14 Comments »
This is post II of how I came to write “The Secret History of Silicon Valley“.
1974. The Vietnam war was winding down. After been stationed at three fighter bases in Thailand (Ubon, Udorn and Korat) and working on Electronic Warfare suites on F-4’s, A-7’s, F-105’s and AC-130’s, I got orders to report to a Strategic [...]
Filed under: Air Force, Secret History of Silicon Valley | Tagged: Steve Blank | 10 Comments »
About a month ago I had one of the strangest phones call of my life. “Steve my name is Donald xx, and I’m the head of external affairs of the CIA’s venture capital firm and we’d like you to keynote our conference.” CIA? “Do you mean the Culinary Institute of America? And you’d like me [...]
Filed under: Air Force, Secret History of Silicon Valley | Tagged: Steve Blank | 13 Comments »
I am going to post on Mondays and Thursdays – at least until I run out of war stories. Posts are going to be a mix of topics: entrepreneurship, secret history and conservation. I’ll try to mix the topics up during the week. BTW, keep the comments coming, they’re read and appreciated.
Filed under: Conservation, Customer Development, Secret History of Silicon Valley | Tagged: Steve Blank | 3 Comments »
