Secret History of Silicon Valley

[Recorded: November 20, 2008]

Today, Silicon Valley is known around the world as a fount of technology innovation and development fueled by private venture capital and peopled by fabled entrepreneurs. But it wasn't always so. Unbeknownst to even seasoned inhabitants, today's Silicon Valley had its start in government secrecy and wartime urgency.

In this lecture, renowned serial entrepreneur Steve Blank presents how the roots of Silicon Valley sprang not from the later development of the silicon semiconductor but instead from the earlier technology duel over the skies of Germany and secret efforts around (and over) the Soviet Union. World War II, the Cold War and one Stanford professor set the stage for the creation and explosive growth of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley. The world was forever changed when the Defense Department, CIA and the National Security Agency acted like today's venture capitalists funding this first wave of entrepreneurship. Steve Blank shows how these groundbreaking early advances lead up to the high-octane, venture capital fueled Silicon Valley we know today.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[Da King]

The Silicon Valley story should be studied by students around the world in their history classes as must-know history.

Thanks for sharing this documentary. One of the best documentaries I have seen.

[sites]

You're an idiot. Global overlords did all those things, not Americans. Go fuck your self.

[4EverDubin]

Well, before that California along with mid-west has always been the hub for military R&D. But SV today solely started with those few from the company Fairchild who rebel against the conventional way of how companies at that time ran things in a hierarchy structure. That is where the transistor was put to good use simply by the ideas and minds of Noyce and the men with him.

[Kenneth Florek]

It is SV history. The title is both a sly tweak of the endless crap conspiracy video titles, and a pun. Everyone knows SV also does classified work that it is illegal for anyone to disclose. Just after WWII the progenitors of the current SV companies were explicitly formed to do classified microwave work for the purpose of spying, targeting and counter-measures, extending the same done during WWII. The author can legally describe what SV was and is doing by using unclassified WWII material.

[ILykToDoDuhDrifting]

No. That is not the history of SV.

One doesn't need to listen to the presentation to know what it is not.

You don't see people advertising the Titanic movie as the secret history of European shipbuilding.

That's because they're not using a stupid sensationalist title to get views like news maker people.

[Kenneth Florek]

You didn't listen to the presentation, so why comment? He gave the functions SV was working on and to what end they were used.

[Kenneth Florek]

You didn't listen. And he did tell you all the way through that it was going to connect.

[Max Nelson]

very informative! thanks for uploading this video, everyone should see this!

[vito7pt]

great stuff! didn't know that SV started due to war