Silicon Valley experience report I/IV: Written by David Ballagi, Co-Founder and CTO Zippsafe AG
Silicon Valley, the birthplace of so many tech companies whose success stories echo through the world and serve as raw models from Medellin in Colombia to Miskolc in East Hungary. In its center Palo Alto startupers like Hewlett and Packard, two engineers, got together in their garage with the goal to make a difference not only in engineering but the world of business. Or close-by in Los Altos, Steve Jobs and Wozniak lay out the groundwork for the PC we are using today. And the pair of Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google at the nearby Stanford University during their PhD.
You ask almost anyone on the street in Europe what Silicon Valley is, they will all know it, they will probably mention the companies above and the buzzwords technology, startups - maybe computer chips. But what is Silicon Valley, what makes it so special, why is it that this place spawns all this tech giants who then go on to conquer the world?
Well, when you arrive it is not obvious, in fact not at all. I was expecting that with all the hype that there would at least be drones flying about delivering packages-walking dogs, robots greeting you in the street lined with futuristic houses. There was nothing like that, even though some of the most brilliant minds and most tech savvy companies of the world were located within a 10 km radius, everything looked, well like the “typical” American town . Then out of nowhere suddenly the Apple headquarters which looks like a giant spaceship rises where thousands of brilliant engineers work and you are just baffled, where did this come from, why out of all the places would it be located in seemingly middle of nowhere. What makes Silicon Valley so special and different from Zurich or Budapest? Stay tuned to find out! Next week, we look at the following topics covered during our Silicon Valley visit:
