11 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
Silicon Valley venture capital firm founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz — notable for its media-heavy approach (operating platform, Substack, podcast network), its investment in crypto and AI, and Andreessen's influential tech essays.
American football coach turned business executive and coach who became the most important executive coach in Silicon Valley history — coaching Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Sundar Pichai, Sheryl Sandberg, and many others — serving as a board member and advisor while demanding no payment.
American software developer and political blogger who wrote under the name Mencius Moldbug — developing neoreactionary (NRx) political theory arguing that democracy is a failing system, that modern Western institutions are controlled by the 'Cathedral' (university-media complex), and that monarchy is preferable to democracy.
American semiconductor company founded in 1957 by the Traitorous Eight (Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, Jean Hoerni, and others) after leaving Shockley Semiconductor — which developed the first commercially viable integrated circuit and spawned Silicon Valley's semiconductor ecosystem.
Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark's Mountain View web browser and internet software company — whose 1995 IPO launched the dot-com era — creators of the Netscape Navigator browser that made the World Wide Web accessible to non-technical users.
Kim Scott's 2017 management guide — arguing that effective managers care personally while challenging directly — introducing the Radical Candor 2x2 matrix that became the most widely used feedback vocabulary in Silicon Valley.
Menlo Park venture capital firm founded by Don Valentine — among the most successful VC firms in history, with investments in Apple, Google, Oracle, LinkedIn, Cisco, WhatsApp, YouTube, Airbnb, and dozens of other defining companies.
Private research university in Palo Alto, California — the academic institution most responsible for producing Silicon Valley technology companies (Google, Yahoo, HP, Sun, Cisco) — home to the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and d.school.
Jimmy Soni's 2022 definitive account of PayPal's founding — covering Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Max Levchin, Reid Hoffman, David Sacks, Roelof Botha, and others — tracking the company from its founding through the eBay acquisition and the subsequent careers of the PayPal Mafia.
Michael Malone's 2014 biography of Intel covering Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove — the three leaders who built Intel from a startup to the dominant semiconductor company.
Silicon Valley startup accelerator founded by Paul Graham — providing seed funding, mentorship, and community to early-stage startups twice yearly — alumni include Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, Reddit, Coinbase, DoorDash.