Foreign visitors to Silicon Valley continually mention how willing we are to help, network and connect strangers. We take it so for granted we never even to bother to talk about it. It’s the “Pay-It-Forward” culture. ——- We’re all in this together – The Chips are Down in 1962 Walker’s Wagon Wheel Bar/Restaurant in Mountain [...]
Filed under: Family/Career/Culture, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Teaching | 32 Comments »
My friend Ben Horowitz and I debated the tech bubble in The Economist. An abridged version of this post was the “closing” statement to Ben’s rebuttal comments. Part 1 is here and Part 2 here. The full version is below. ————————————————— It’s been fun debating the question, “Are we in a tech bubble?” with my colleague Ben Horowitz. Ben and his partner Marc [...]
Filed under: Family/Career/Culture, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Venture Capital | 14 Comments »
It’s a paradox, but early sales success in a startup can kill its chances of becoming a large successful company. The cause is often sales and marketing execs who’ve become too comfortable with an initial sales model and panic at the first sign of a Pivot. As a result they block new iterations of the [...]
Filed under: Customer Development, Secret History of Silicon Valley | 13 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 video and slides as well as the bibliography for sources and supplemental reading. ———— By the early 1960’s Lockheed Missiles Division in Sunnyvale was quickly becoming the largest [...]
Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley | 4 Comments »
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 [...]
Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley | 7 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 Historyvideo and slides as well as the bibliography for sources and supplemental reading. ———— The Soviet Union’s detonation of an atomic weapon in 1949 and the start of the [...]
Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley | 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. ———————– The Future is Clear – Microwave Valley Forever In 1956 Hewlett Packard, back then a maker of test equipment was the [...]
Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley | 3 Comments »
“In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Goodwill.” Winston Churchill ——– 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.) . The gist of the talk was that [...]
Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley | 5 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 second of three posts about the rise of “risk capital” and how it came to [...]
Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley, Venture Capital | 7 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 [...]
Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley, Venture Capital | 6 Comments »
I love TechCrunch. If you’re a startup raising money or just want to see your name online, there’s not a better blog on the web. Reading this TechCrunch post made me remember the first time I saw someone confront a worldview they didn’t expect. Discovering that your worldview is wrong or mistaken can be a [...]
Filed under: ESL, Family/Career/Culture, Secret History of Silicon Valley | Tagged: Tips for Startups | 14 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. ———————– Swords Into Plowshares After the end of World War II, returning veterans were happy to beat swords into plowshares (and microwave [...]
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. ———————– In the 1950′s Stanford University’s Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL) continued to develop innovative microwave tubes for the U.S. military. This next [...]
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. ——– 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 [...]
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 [...]
Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley | Tagged: Cold War, Electonic Warfare, Fred Terman, Steve Blank | 8 Comments »
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