Silicon Valley: A Breeding Ground for Entrepreneurs

The garage and the entrepreneurial spirit it represents are an enduring part of local lore.

By Ellen Lee, FrontDoor.com | Published: 11/26/2008

Many of the world's most high-tech, well known companies, such as Google, Yahoo and Facebook, call Silicon Valley home.

It all started in a garage.

In 1937, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard rented a garage in Palo Alto for $45 a month and started developing the first instruments that would establish Hewlett-Packard as a major electronics maker and put Silicon Valley on the map as a hub for high-tech innovation.

More than 70 years later, HP is one of the foremost brands in consumer electronics, manufacturing laptop and desktop computers, printers, hand-held gadgets and calculators. Inspired by the duo's success, many more Silicon Valley technology companies, from Apple to Google, have launched from similarly humble beginnings -- not always literally in a garage, but in bedrooms and dorm rooms and on kitchen tables -- and have become dominant forces in the industry.

Since then, the garage and the entrepreneurial spirit it represents have become an enduring part of Silicon Valley lore.

"I think the garage is a symbol of the idea that 'anyone can do this,' and so it has a cherished place in the Silicon Valley legend," said Leslie Berlin, project historian for the Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford University.

Silicon Valley gets its name from the building blocks of electronics, the silicon transistor. Today, Silicon Valley, concentrated in Santa Clara County and extending to the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area, doesn't just produce computers and chips, but all manners of technology, from video games to cell phones to social-networking websites.

Calling Silicon Valley home are some of the world's most well-known, high-tech companies, including Google, Yahoo, eBay, YouTube and Facebook. It's the birthplace of the iPod, iPhone and the Macintosh computer, made by Cupertino's Apple Inc. TurboTax, the software that helps you file your taxes each April, and Norton AntiVirus software, to protect your home computer, are also developed here. Silicon Valley's identity, and in turn, the San Francisco Bay Area's, is undeniably linked to technology and innovation.

The Silicon Valley Support System

How did this happen? Success begat success, Berlin said. Early companies such as HP and Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory bred the next generation of entrepreneurs, who left to start their own businesses.

A system started to form in Silicon Valley, one that remains strong today. Around the entrepreneurs a network was built, a support crew of specialized law firms, equipment vendors, manufacturing plants and other suppliers. Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley, trained and produced a fresh, top-notch workforce. Venture capitalists and investors, many of them entrepreneurs themselves, supplied the funds for startups. Once the startup succeeded -- and granted, many failed -- they turned around and used the money to seed another young company.

Years later, Silicon Valley's reputation as a mecca for high-tech development continues to draw eager dreamers.

Paul Bragiel, the 31-year-old CEO of Lefora, a startup that develops online forum technology, likens Silicon Valley for high-tech entrepreneurs to Los Angeles for actors. "This city is full of transplants looking to make it happen," he said.

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