22 ms·

Tech in SFBA reminds me of the Resource curse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse). SFBA did nothing spe

by ylhert 6y ago

Tech in SFBA reminds me of the Resource curse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse). SFBA did nothing special to attract the wealth of technology companies, they effectively got lucky with Shockley/Fairchild/Traitorous 8 and the boom in technology that followed. It seems the local gov't have squandered an opportunity to truly capitalize on the gift they were given, and perhaps even done their best to jeopardize these resources.

dekhn 6y ago
This is ridiculous. The Bay Area, specifically Stanford and Berkeley, contributed to the WWII tech research initiative and then afterwards, Terman made Stanford Research Park which led to Silicon Valley.
- bgorman 6y ago
  Without William Shockley moving to the west coast, the "Silicon" part of Silicon Valley would likely be elsewhere in the world.
  - dekhn 6y ago
    he played an important role, but all the work by military tech companies and stanford during the war did as well.
  - obmelvin 6y ago
    As you point out he could've chosen elsewhere to move. Seems likely the aforementioned developments helped him pick where he did.
    - jgon 6y ago
      He chose to move where he did because he was raised there and moved back to take care of his ailing mother.
  - CalChris 6y ago
    That's a counterfactual. Yeah, maybe Shockley's project happened elsewhere it Silicon Elsewhere could have happened somewhere else. But it didn't happen elsewhere. But you are assuming that it would have catalyzed elsewhere. For example, it could have catalyzed in Murray Hill, New Jersey after the transistor but it didn't. Anyways, people are always leaving the Bay Area. If you came here five years ago, first you were new here and second, you've known people who have left. So Keith Rabois left for Miami. Great for him. The question is whether the next Keith Rabois will spring forth from Miami. Unlikely.
    - Apocryphon 6y ago
      Magic Leap is based in Plantation, part of the Miami metro. So- you're still right.
    - auston 6y ago
      I believe they will, given the current Keith Rabois as a mentor.
    - bgorman 6y ago
      It is interesting how you can gloss over the signifcance of the inventor of the transistor moving to the bay area, and then use the example how his former laboratory in New Jersey failed to commercialize the transistor as an example of how Silicon Valley is uniquely situated to allow innovation to happen. A much more reasonable interpretation is that Shockley was going succeed no matter where he went, not that Silicon Valley is uniquely situated, especially with the dominance of east coast companies in defense contracting.
      - CalChris 6y ago
        When Shockley moved west in 1956, Stanford Research Park was already 3 years old. Its defense roots predate even that. Shockley wasn't moving to a technological wasteland. https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ Ames Research Center dates to 1939. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ames_Research_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ames_Research_Center
  - jarjoura 6y ago
    William Shockley graduated from CalTech, and his connections from CalTech, more specifically Arnold Beckman, funded his new venture in silicon transistors. It's true that Shockley picked Palo Alto because of his mother, but it would be unfair to not also credit Stanford who had an outsized role in helping solidify the Bay Area as the hub for "Silicon Valley". Many many many companies tried to move the industry away from California since the 50s, and every time, those companies star players ended up relocating to the bay area. California's free-wheeling culture permeates at all levels, from investors all the way down to the individual contributors. It just wasn't an accident that Silicon Valley happened the way it did.
    - maxwell 6y ago
      Okay, so if California's "free-wheeling culture" caused SV to be where it is, what factored into CA's cultural development? Why the lack of free-wheeling culture elsewhere?
      - ghaff 6y ago
        While I don't fully agree with the parent, there was a long tradition of "Go west young man" for people who wanted to make their fortunates far from eastern bankers and other conservative industries. Very broad brush, but also not wholly inaccurate.
      - qqqwerty 6y ago
        Are you serious? SF's Castro is the gay capital of the world. Summer of Love. The Emerald triangle. The Hells Angels. I could go on.
        maxwell 6y ago
        But why there? Why not somewhere else? Only seemingly non-random factor you gave is the Emerald Triangle, which could be the answer.
        qqqwerty 6y ago
- nph5667 6y ago
  The point was the local govts did not contribute to the the rise of Silicon Valley, not that no one in the Bay area was involved
  - dekhn 6y ago
    local govts did a few things to enable this. They created a welcoming business environment that allowed for rapid expansion. For example, Stanford Research Park was a joint venture of Stanford, and Palo Alto. I am not sure there is any good writeup on the contribution of local governments to silicon valley.
    - claydavisss 6y ago
      The did little more than let tech companies buy orchards. Hardly intense business incubation.
    - hogFeast 6y ago
      Do you know how many local govts tried to do similar things and it failed? Local govt is not the essential component here.
    - nph5667 6y ago
      If you say so. As an outsider (although I used to work close, in Sacramento, for 5 years), I only can say that I did not hear anything about substantial govt participation, similar to post-war infrastructure projects, or recent push for green energy. But, of course, I will be glad to find out that the Valley is the coproduct of some govt program, not only a lucky star alignment.
- xapata 6y ago
  I think there's some truth in the synthesis of this dialectic.
- Cd00d 6y ago
  Yeah, I thought it was somewhat due to Stanford's handling of IP. The argument I heard was that if you're researching at Stanford and make a productizable discovery you can spin off a company no strings. I was at Cornell when I heard this, where any company built off on-campus research had to sign over 20% of the company up front. Makes those initial pitches to VC that much harder.
  - dekhn 6y ago
    it was a lot more. they built an incubator called Stanford Research Park as a joint venture with Palo Alto. It gave access to students (key to any tech company, getting fresh students with new ideas and up to date knowledge), access to VC, and nice facilities for tech startups. I don't know the exact terms of universities when it comes to founding companies but I don't see how the university can prevent you from founding a company, or demand a percentage.
  - cjhveal 6y ago
    I don't think that's the case. I've anecdotally heard that Stanford does take some (possibly small) amount of equity. From the first paragraph of Stanford's patent policy[0]: > All potentially patentable inventions conceived or first reduced to practice in whole or in part by members of the faculty or staff (including student employees) of the University in the course of their University responsibilities or with more than incidental use of University resources, shall be disclosed on a timely basis to the University. Title to such inventions shall be assigned to the University, regardless of the source of funding, if any. For an example of an institution with the kind of IP policy you're describing, the University of Waterloo in Canada has a policy[1] that by default assigns IP to creators rather than the institution: > Except as stipulated below, it is University policy that ownership of rights in IP created in the course of teaching and research activities belong to the creator(s). [0]: https://doresearch.stanford.edu/policies/research-policy-handbook/intellectual-property/inventions-patents-and-licensing https://doresearch.stanford.edu/policies/research-policy-han... [1]: https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat/policies-procedures-guidelines/policies/policy-73-intellectual-property-rights https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat/policies-procedures-guideli...
    - 6y ago
- LeifCarrotson 6y ago
  No one disputes that those events you cite happened. However, those events were essentially random, not caused by local efforts to stimulate industry. Because of them, the area was blessed/cursed with an excess of productivity that it didn't know how to cause. Now it's just coasting downhill, unable to maintain the altitude that it once had because it never knew how to (was never possible to?) build that altitude without a big dose of random luck.
  - dekhn 6y ago
    Stanford Research Park was a joint venture between Stanford and the city of palo alto. It was highly non-random.
    - maxwell 6y ago
      Lots of failed research parks, oil wells, railroads, gold mining operations. The thing with oil wells, railroads, and gold mining, is that geography/geology matters more than path dependence. Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and to a lesser extent NYC and London, are more about path dependence. Their dominance in their sectors seem more resulting from, if anything specific to point to, legal factors, than geography or any particular natural resource/phenomenon. Why make movies and software in California, one in the south and the other a bit more north? The founding of Hollywood was just as random as the events that "caused" the rise of the Valley. What if Griffith had gone elsewhere? What if Edison hadn't enforced his patents, causing the exodus across the country to make movies out of his purview? Similar climate/environs/affordability elsewhere, why not AZ, NM, TX, GA, FL? This is a lot different than, say, the reasons for North Carolina to eventually beat New England in textile production, or why the Rust Belt is where it is, or why rail and shipbuilding was big in the Northeast but not so much space and auto manufacturing. It's more like why the appliances that are made in the U.S. are mostly made in the south.
      - Bluestein 6y ago
        I honestly do not understand the downvotes. These are perfectly valid points, well argued ... Edit: Was grayed out when first seen.-
- lock-free 6y ago
  Lots of places contributed to WWII research initiatives. Why not Chicago, where the first nuclear reactor was built? Or Boston, with MIT whose research labs churned out fire control systems and computers? Or Los Angeles, with its defense powerhouses and UCLA/Cal-Tech? Or Detroit? Or anywhere else in the US with given the wartime mobilization? Because Shockley moved here. Fairchild was founded here, and the Fairchildren built Silicon Valley and its venture capitalism.
  - dekhn 6y ago
    MIT had a similar revolution centered around Route 128.
- ylhert 6y ago
  What about other municipalities/areas who have great universities and contributed to WW2? There are many examples of areas with similar initiatives and prestigious universities but have not reaped the same outsized rewards over the past 60-80 years as SFBA. So I would posit that it is more luck than execution, and thus qualifies as a resource curse
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    The lack of non compete bans anywhere else in the country is not luck though, and other worker protections that prevent legal liability for stuff you work on outside of work.
- JDulin 6y ago
  Yes, but as he correctly points out, none of those things were done by the local govts.
- abhinavsharma 6y ago
  This lecture by Steve Blank at the Computer History Museum is a great summary of the growth of Silicon Valley https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo
- ed_balls 6y ago
  Could you make a similar statement in 1970 about Detroit?
  - techelite 6y ago
    "Detroit" moved to the suburbs. Check out the statistics for Oakland county (and possibly macomb county for the blue collar workers). Toyota, GM, Ford, Chrysler, Nissan, VW, and all their parts suppliers(and the supplier parts suppliers) have at minimum a white collar office in south east Michigan. The event that caused the Exodus from Detroit was the Race Riots. You can Google that because I'm not touching that topic.(and it doesn't help Detroit has a 1% tax)
    - ed_balls 6y ago
      >"Detroit" moved to the suburbs Similar thing can happen to SV. People moving to "suburbs" -> other parts of CA.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      Most people I know would choose to live in a temperate climate with low humidity if they had the option. Detroit might have been economically useful due to certain modes of travel and location of population at the time, but that may not be relevant anymore.
- 8ytecoder 6y ago
  It's also the strong anti-non-compete of CA that allowed the flourishing and spread of technology and know-how.
trhway 6y ago
don't forget non-competes and moonlighting. As the rest the world has proven there is [comparatively] no innovation and startups without these two. The things like for example Traitorous 8 can never happen. Wrt. people leaving because of WFH - anecdotally people leave for other place where there are campuses of their companies. That suggests that there is not much trust in WFH. Once WFH subsides many of those people will still continue their comfortable work and life in those places. Those "stale blood" people - the highly paid employees of those large corps - aren't really drivers of innovation (making $0.5M+ at say Google as a programming drone one isn't going to drop it and make a startup - that is one of the points why Google is paying well :), and by leaving SFBA they provide the chance (by for example relieving real estate pressure a bit) for the "new blood" to come in.
- CalChris 6y ago
  For example, Wozniak was moonlighting from his HP job when he worked with Jobs at Atari.
gumby 6y ago
Come on: there’s a beautiful A/B test you can consult: in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, Boston’s route 128 was the “Silicon Valley” of its time. The US poured even more money into it than they did the Bay Area. Yet which grew and which stagnated?
- woofie11 6y ago
  I think THE major difference was enforcement of noncompetes (as well as those as a proxy for a slew of similar regulatory differences). Financial resources went to route 128 because of a more corporate-friendly regulatory climate. Innovation came from Silicon Valley because of a more innovation-friendly regulatory climate. Guess which won out? US reached economic supremacy in part due to a weaker IP scheme than Europe, and China is doing likewise right now. Innovation requires a mixture of economic rewards (which doesn't happen in the absence of any enforcement), and building off of the work of others (which doesn't happen with strict IP laws). Massachusetts went off of the deep end of more is better. Coincidentally, Boston is doing better for big business, like biotech, in part because there, the balance falls in a different place. It's very tough to start a scrappy biotech, so the number of employee leaving to do a competing startup is pretty darned low in either case. The downsides of strong IP are smaller, and the upsides of weak IP are greater.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    >Guess which won out? For a long time, Route 128 did largely win out, semiconductors in SV notwithstanding. The lead in computer-related technology did tend to shift to California with the shift to microcomputers. Although it's not clear that was in any way inevitable. (After all, Compaq was in Texas.)
    - woofie11 6y ago
      .... Which was the exact moment computing stopped looking like biotech. Before microcomputers, starting a computer company required an investment of perhaps a million dollars in today's currency, depending on the type of company. After microcomputers, anyone could do it out of their home. If my employer is making a CAD tool and makes a dumb decision, I can make my better CAD tool and put them out of business. Even hardware changed when I no longer needed to buy individual transistors. Things like the Apple could be designed out of a garage, with commercial off-the-shelf parts, perhaps borrowing a little bit of money from friends and family, but without even taking out a second mortgage. From there, things spiraled up, with quick-turn $40 PCBs, fabless IC companies, and so on. It didn't have to happen in Silicon Valley, but it couldn't happen in Boston, and with Stanford and what not, Silicon Valley was as good a place as any.
dv_dt 6y ago
I think there was an element of hippy culture mixed in there that contributed to success from openness and willingness to experiment on paths not directly connected to profit. Also, I hardly think the opportunity was squandered - it's paid off for a long run. I do think there are challenges ahead for the model to continue to succeed faster than other areas.
- scruple 6y ago
  > I think there was an element of hippy culture mixed in there that contributed to success from openness and willingness to experiment on paths not directly connected to profit. I'd call it counter culture but I otherwise agree with you.
badconvincer 6y ago
This is reactionary revisionism and based on your post history you know it.
- CountSessine 6y ago
  I remain unconvinced.
- dang 6y ago
  Personal attacks and name-calling will get you banned on HN. Please don't create accounts to break the site guidelines with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
vkou 6y ago
> It seems the local gov't have squandered an opportunity to truly capitalize on the gift they were given, and perhaps even done their best to jeopardize these resources. Wait, what? What exactly was local government supposed to do with this, ah gift? From the perspective of someone who doesn't live in the Bay area, it is a libertarian paradise for the haves, unlivable for the have-nots, and is the pinnacle of American culture, with its focus on individualistic solutions (detached housing, strong zoning laws that protect existing landowners, reliance on personal vehicle ownership, privatization of critical services) to society-scale problems. Throw in conflicting interests of the residents of the cities that make up the SFBA, and you pretty much get what one would expect. Before asking why your local government has not fixed <some problem that makes us mildly uncomfortable>, you may want to instead ask 'Why haven't we elected a local government that would fix that problem?' Tech has an outsized amount of political influence on governments and elections in the area. Governments don't exist in a vacuum, completely detached from the desires of their constituents.
- alentist 6y ago
  > the Bay Area > libertarian paradise What a strange notion. San Francisco has some of the most paternalistic laws in the US, courtesy of its board of supervisors. Some of them even wanted to ban corporate cafeterias, an issue which returned last year: https://sfist.com/2019/07/22/watered-down-version-of-sfs-tech-cafeteria-ban-returns-to-supes-agenda/ https://sfist.com/2019/07/22/watered-down-version-of-sfs-tec... To pin the blame for these problems on libertarians, of all people, is the height of absurdity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_in_the_San_Francisco_Bay_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_in_the_San_Francisco_... See also: https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/OPINION-San-Francisco-Is-Nanny-State-U-S-A-2732418.php https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/OPINION-San-Francisc... https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Nanny-state-or-progressive-politics-In-Ban-13855603.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Nanny-state-or-... https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-nov-02-la-fi-happy-meals-20101103-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-nov-02-la-fi-ha... https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/economic-freedom-of-north-america-2019-US-edition.pdf https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/economic... https://reason.org/policy-study/us-metropolitan-area-economic-freedom-index/ https://reason.org/policy-study/us-metropolitan-area-economi... > zoning laws Where did you get the bizarre idea that their zoning laws are in any way “libertarian” or “individualist”? https://marketurbanismreport.com/blog/san-franciscos-regulations-are-the-cause-of-its-housing-crisis https://marketurbanismreport.com/blog/san-franciscos-regulat...
franklampard 6y ago
What about great weather and food
JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
A local government is only as good as its people. It's people squandered it, though forcing egregious zoning regulations that's leading to the exodus. They claimed profits to the point where it damaged their ability to collect further profits.
- rmrfstar 6y ago
  Isn't SF wildly corrupt? Do the puppet masters bear any responsibility for the outcomes they orchestrate? Or is stewardship an obsolete concept?
  - JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
    Assessing through the lens of strictly zoning laws, I don't think they've done anything wrong. If we (as a society) say zoning is controlled by local governments, and not the state government, then they are free to vote in people that pass (what I view) as draconian zoning policy. My criticism of zoning is, historically, it has been used to keep certain groups of people out of certain geographic areas.
  - programd 6y ago
    Yes SF is apparently wildly corrupt. There's an ongoing FBI probe which seems to show that a wide swath of top level city public works employees have been involved in some sort of corruption scandal. The latest revelation is about the former mayor Ed Lee who died last year. Follow the links in the article for all the tentacles in this farce. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/Former-S-F-Mayor-Ed-Lee-code-name-35-15777827.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/Forme...
ummonk 6y ago
The ban on non-competes was pretty instrumental to allowing the startup revolution to occur somewhere in California.
m463 6y ago
I believe that is incorrect. California has laws that make it safe and easy for employees to go form a startup at the drop of a hat. In California, regardless of their employee contract, employees own the inventions: - made in their own time - made without using the employers equipment or technology Other states (Texas?) give employers an enormous amount of power over their employees, even giving them rights to the ideas in their heads.
sulam 6y ago
> Tech in SFBA reminds me of the Resource curse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse). Okay, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here because you said "reminds [you]", not that it _is_ in fact the Resource curse. However, you must acknowledge that the Resource Curse doesn't describe the SF Bay Area _at all_. We have the richest real estate in country, some of the highest earning zipcodes in the country, employment rate most of the country would love to have, etc. There's no "curse" here, as defined in the economic sense.

by ylhert 6y ago

dekhn 6y ago

This is ridiculous. The Bay Area, specifically Stanford and Berkeley, contributed to the WWII tech research initiative and then afterwards, Terman made Stanford Research Park which led to Silicon Valley.

bgorman 6y ago
Without William Shockley moving to the west coast, the "Silicon" part of Silicon Valley would likely be elsewhere in the world.
- dekhn 6y ago
  he played an important role, but all the work by military tech companies and stanford during the war did as well.
- obmelvin 6y ago
  As you point out he could've chosen elsewhere to move. Seems likely the aforementioned developments helped him pick where he did.
  - jgon 6y ago
    He chose to move where he did because he was raised there and moved back to take care of his ailing mother.
- CalChris 6y ago
  That's a counterfactual. Yeah, maybe Shockley's project happened elsewhere it Silicon Elsewhere could have happened somewhere else. But it didn't happen elsewhere. But you are assuming that it would have catalyzed elsewhere. For example, it could have catalyzed in Murray Hill, New Jersey after the transistor but it didn't. Anyways, people are always leaving the Bay Area. If you came here five years ago, first you were new here and second, you've known people who have left. So Keith Rabois left for Miami. Great for him. The question is whether the next Keith Rabois will spring forth from Miami. Unlikely.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    Magic Leap is based in Plantation, part of the Miami metro. So- you're still right.
  - auston 6y ago
    I believe they will, given the current Keith Rabois as a mentor.
  - bgorman 6y ago
    It is interesting how you can gloss over the signifcance of the inventor of the transistor moving to the bay area, and then use the example how his former laboratory in New Jersey failed to commercialize the transistor as an example of how Silicon Valley is uniquely situated to allow innovation to happen. A much more reasonable interpretation is that Shockley was going succeed no matter where he went, not that Silicon Valley is uniquely situated, especially with the dominance of east coast companies in defense contracting.
    - CalChris 6y ago
      When Shockley moved west in 1956, Stanford Research Park was already 3 years old. Its defense roots predate even that. Shockley wasn't moving to a technological wasteland. https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ Ames Research Center dates to 1939. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ames_Research_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ames_Research_Center
- jarjoura 6y ago
  William Shockley graduated from CalTech, and his connections from CalTech, more specifically Arnold Beckman, funded his new venture in silicon transistors. It's true that Shockley picked Palo Alto because of his mother, but it would be unfair to not also credit Stanford who had an outsized role in helping solidify the Bay Area as the hub for "Silicon Valley". Many many many companies tried to move the industry away from California since the 50s, and every time, those companies star players ended up relocating to the bay area. California's free-wheeling culture permeates at all levels, from investors all the way down to the individual contributors. It just wasn't an accident that Silicon Valley happened the way it did.
  - maxwell 6y ago
    Okay, so if California's "free-wheeling culture" caused SV to be where it is, what factored into CA's cultural development? Why the lack of free-wheeling culture elsewhere?
    - ghaff 6y ago
      While I don't fully agree with the parent, there was a long tradition of "Go west young man" for people who wanted to make their fortunates far from eastern bankers and other conservative industries. Very broad brush, but also not wholly inaccurate.
    - qqqwerty 6y ago
      Are you serious? SF's Castro is the gay capital of the world. Summer of Love. The Emerald triangle. The Hells Angels. I could go on.
      - maxwell 6y ago
        But why there? Why not somewhere else? Only seemingly non-random factor you gave is the Emerald Triangle, which could be the answer.
        qqqwerty 6y ago
nph5667 6y ago
The point was the local govts did not contribute to the the rise of Silicon Valley, not that no one in the Bay area was involved
- dekhn 6y ago
  local govts did a few things to enable this. They created a welcoming business environment that allowed for rapid expansion. For example, Stanford Research Park was a joint venture of Stanford, and Palo Alto. I am not sure there is any good writeup on the contribution of local governments to silicon valley.
  - claydavisss 6y ago
    The did little more than let tech companies buy orchards. Hardly intense business incubation.
  - hogFeast 6y ago
    Do you know how many local govts tried to do similar things and it failed? Local govt is not the essential component here.
  - nph5667 6y ago
    If you say so. As an outsider (although I used to work close, in Sacramento, for 5 years), I only can say that I did not hear anything about substantial govt participation, similar to post-war infrastructure projects, or recent push for green energy. But, of course, I will be glad to find out that the Valley is the coproduct of some govt program, not only a lucky star alignment.
xapata 6y ago
I think there's some truth in the synthesis of this dialectic.
Cd00d 6y ago
Yeah, I thought it was somewhat due to Stanford's handling of IP. The argument I heard was that if you're researching at Stanford and make a productizable discovery you can spin off a company no strings. I was at Cornell when I heard this, where any company built off on-campus research had to sign over 20% of the company up front. Makes those initial pitches to VC that much harder.
- dekhn 6y ago
  it was a lot more. they built an incubator called Stanford Research Park as a joint venture with Palo Alto. It gave access to students (key to any tech company, getting fresh students with new ideas and up to date knowledge), access to VC, and nice facilities for tech startups. I don't know the exact terms of universities when it comes to founding companies but I don't see how the university can prevent you from founding a company, or demand a percentage.
- cjhveal 6y ago
  I don't think that's the case. I've anecdotally heard that Stanford does take some (possibly small) amount of equity. From the first paragraph of Stanford's patent policy[0]: > All potentially patentable inventions conceived or first reduced to practice in whole or in part by members of the faculty or staff (including student employees) of the University in the course of their University responsibilities or with more than incidental use of University resources, shall be disclosed on a timely basis to the University. Title to such inventions shall be assigned to the University, regardless of the source of funding, if any. For an example of an institution with the kind of IP policy you're describing, the University of Waterloo in Canada has a policy[1] that by default assigns IP to creators rather than the institution: > Except as stipulated below, it is University policy that ownership of rights in IP created in the course of teaching and research activities belong to the creator(s). [0]: https://doresearch.stanford.edu/policies/research-policy-handbook/intellectual-property/inventions-patents-and-licensing https://doresearch.stanford.edu/policies/research-policy-han... [1]: https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat/policies-procedures-guidelines/policies/policy-73-intellectual-property-rights https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat/policies-procedures-guideli...
  - 6y ago
LeifCarrotson 6y ago
No one disputes that those events you cite happened. However, those events were essentially random, not caused by local efforts to stimulate industry. Because of them, the area was blessed/cursed with an excess of productivity that it didn't know how to cause. Now it's just coasting downhill, unable to maintain the altitude that it once had because it never knew how to (was never possible to?) build that altitude without a big dose of random luck.
- dekhn 6y ago
  Stanford Research Park was a joint venture between Stanford and the city of palo alto. It was highly non-random.
  - maxwell 6y ago
    Lots of failed research parks, oil wells, railroads, gold mining operations. The thing with oil wells, railroads, and gold mining, is that geography/geology matters more than path dependence. Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and to a lesser extent NYC and London, are more about path dependence. Their dominance in their sectors seem more resulting from, if anything specific to point to, legal factors, than geography or any particular natural resource/phenomenon. Why make movies and software in California, one in the south and the other a bit more north? The founding of Hollywood was just as random as the events that "caused" the rise of the Valley. What if Griffith had gone elsewhere? What if Edison hadn't enforced his patents, causing the exodus across the country to make movies out of his purview? Similar climate/environs/affordability elsewhere, why not AZ, NM, TX, GA, FL? This is a lot different than, say, the reasons for North Carolina to eventually beat New England in textile production, or why the Rust Belt is where it is, or why rail and shipbuilding was big in the Northeast but not so much space and auto manufacturing. It's more like why the appliances that are made in the U.S. are mostly made in the south.
    - Bluestein 6y ago
      I honestly do not understand the downvotes. These are perfectly valid points, well argued ... Edit: Was grayed out when first seen.-
lock-free 6y ago
Lots of places contributed to WWII research initiatives. Why not Chicago, where the first nuclear reactor was built? Or Boston, with MIT whose research labs churned out fire control systems and computers? Or Los Angeles, with its defense powerhouses and UCLA/Cal-Tech? Or Detroit? Or anywhere else in the US with given the wartime mobilization? Because Shockley moved here. Fairchild was founded here, and the Fairchildren built Silicon Valley and its venture capitalism.
- dekhn 6y ago
  MIT had a similar revolution centered around Route 128.
ylhert 6y ago
What about other municipalities/areas who have great universities and contributed to WW2? There are many examples of areas with similar initiatives and prestigious universities but have not reaped the same outsized rewards over the past 60-80 years as SFBA. So I would posit that it is more luck than execution, and thus qualifies as a resource curse
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  The lack of non compete bans anywhere else in the country is not luck though, and other worker protections that prevent legal liability for stuff you work on outside of work.
JDulin 6y ago
Yes, but as he correctly points out, none of those things were done by the local govts.
abhinavsharma 6y ago
This lecture by Steve Blank at the Computer History Museum is a great summary of the growth of Silicon Valley https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo
ed_balls 6y ago
Could you make a similar statement in 1970 about Detroit?
- techelite 6y ago
  "Detroit" moved to the suburbs. Check out the statistics for Oakland county (and possibly macomb county for the blue collar workers). Toyota, GM, Ford, Chrysler, Nissan, VW, and all their parts suppliers(and the supplier parts suppliers) have at minimum a white collar office in south east Michigan. The event that caused the Exodus from Detroit was the Race Riots. You can Google that because I'm not touching that topic.(and it doesn't help Detroit has a 1% tax)
  - ed_balls 6y ago
    >"Detroit" moved to the suburbs Similar thing can happen to SV. People moving to "suburbs" -> other parts of CA.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Most people I know would choose to live in a temperate climate with low humidity if they had the option. Detroit might have been economically useful due to certain modes of travel and location of population at the time, but that may not be relevant anymore.
8ytecoder 6y ago
It's also the strong anti-non-compete of CA that allowed the flourishing and spread of technology and know-how.

trhway 6y ago

don't forget non-competes and moonlighting. As the rest the world has proven there is [comparatively] no innovation and startups without these two. The things like for example Traitorous 8 can never happen. Wrt. people leaving because of WFH - anecdotally people leave for other place where there are campuses of their companies. That suggests that there is not much trust in WFH. Once WFH subsides many of those people will still continue their comfortable work and life in those places. Those "stale blood" people - the highly paid employees of those large corps - aren't really drivers of innovation (making $0.5M+ at say Google as a programming drone one isn't going to drop it and make a startup - that is one of the points why Google is paying well :), and by leaving SFBA they provide the chance (by for example relieving real estate pressure a bit) for the "new blood" to come in.

CalChris 6y ago
For example, Wozniak was moonlighting from his HP job when he worked with Jobs at Atari.

gumby 6y ago

Come on: there’s a beautiful A/B test you can consult: in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, Boston’s route 128 was the “Silicon Valley” of its time. The US poured even more money into it than they did the Bay Area. Yet which grew and which stagnated?

woofie11 6y ago
I think THE major difference was enforcement of noncompetes (as well as those as a proxy for a slew of similar regulatory differences). Financial resources went to route 128 because of a more corporate-friendly regulatory climate. Innovation came from Silicon Valley because of a more innovation-friendly regulatory climate. Guess which won out? US reached economic supremacy in part due to a weaker IP scheme than Europe, and China is doing likewise right now. Innovation requires a mixture of economic rewards (which doesn't happen in the absence of any enforcement), and building off of the work of others (which doesn't happen with strict IP laws). Massachusetts went off of the deep end of more is better. Coincidentally, Boston is doing better for big business, like biotech, in part because there, the balance falls in a different place. It's very tough to start a scrappy biotech, so the number of employee leaving to do a competing startup is pretty darned low in either case. The downsides of strong IP are smaller, and the upsides of weak IP are greater.
- ghaff 6y ago
  >Guess which won out? For a long time, Route 128 did largely win out, semiconductors in SV notwithstanding. The lead in computer-related technology did tend to shift to California with the shift to microcomputers. Although it's not clear that was in any way inevitable. (After all, Compaq was in Texas.)
  - woofie11 6y ago
    .... Which was the exact moment computing stopped looking like biotech. Before microcomputers, starting a computer company required an investment of perhaps a million dollars in today's currency, depending on the type of company. After microcomputers, anyone could do it out of their home. If my employer is making a CAD tool and makes a dumb decision, I can make my better CAD tool and put them out of business. Even hardware changed when I no longer needed to buy individual transistors. Things like the Apple could be designed out of a garage, with commercial off-the-shelf parts, perhaps borrowing a little bit of money from friends and family, but without even taking out a second mortgage. From there, things spiraled up, with quick-turn $40 PCBs, fabless IC companies, and so on. It didn't have to happen in Silicon Valley, but it couldn't happen in Boston, and with Stanford and what not, Silicon Valley was as good a place as any.

dv_dt 6y ago

I think there was an element of hippy culture mixed in there that contributed to success from openness and willingness to experiment on paths not directly connected to profit. Also, I hardly think the opportunity was squandered - it's paid off for a long run. I do think there are challenges ahead for the model to continue to succeed faster than other areas.

scruple 6y ago
> I think there was an element of hippy culture mixed in there that contributed to success from openness and willingness to experiment on paths not directly connected to profit. I'd call it counter culture but I otherwise agree with you.

badconvincer 6y ago

This is reactionary revisionism and based on your post history you know it.

CountSessine 6y ago
I remain unconvinced.
dang 6y ago
Personal attacks and name-calling will get you banned on HN. Please don't create accounts to break the site guidelines with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

vkou 6y ago

> It seems the local gov't have squandered an opportunity to truly capitalize on the gift they were given, and perhaps even done their best to jeopardize these resources. Wait, what? What exactly was local government supposed to do with this, ah gift? From the perspective of someone who doesn't live in the Bay area, it is a libertarian paradise for the haves, unlivable for the have-nots, and is the pinnacle of American culture, with its focus on individualistic solutions (detached housing, strong zoning laws that protect existing landowners, reliance on personal vehicle ownership, privatization of critical services) to society-scale problems. Throw in conflicting interests of the residents of the cities that make up the SFBA, and you pretty much get what one would expect. Before asking why your local government has not fixed <some problem that makes us mildly uncomfortable>, you may want to instead ask 'Why haven't we elected a local government that would fix that problem?' Tech has an outsized amount of political influence on governments and elections in the area. Governments don't exist in a vacuum, completely detached from the desires of their constituents.

alentist 6y ago
> the Bay Area > libertarian paradise What a strange notion. San Francisco has some of the most paternalistic laws in the US, courtesy of its board of supervisors. Some of them even wanted to ban corporate cafeterias, an issue which returned last year: https://sfist.com/2019/07/22/watered-down-version-of-sfs-tech-cafeteria-ban-returns-to-supes-agenda/ https://sfist.com/2019/07/22/watered-down-version-of-sfs-tec... To pin the blame for these problems on libertarians, of all people, is the height of absurdity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_in_the_San_Francisco_Bay_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_in_the_San_Francisco_... See also: https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/OPINION-San-Francisco-Is-Nanny-State-U-S-A-2732418.php https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/OPINION-San-Francisc... https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Nanny-state-or-progressive-politics-In-Ban-13855603.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Nanny-state-or-... https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-nov-02-la-fi-happy-meals-20101103-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-nov-02-la-fi-ha... https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/economic-freedom-of-north-america-2019-US-edition.pdf https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/economic... https://reason.org/policy-study/us-metropolitan-area-economic-freedom-index/ https://reason.org/policy-study/us-metropolitan-area-economi... > zoning laws Where did you get the bizarre idea that their zoning laws are in any way “libertarian” or “individualist”? https://marketurbanismreport.com/blog/san-franciscos-regulations-are-the-cause-of-its-housing-crisis https://marketurbanismreport.com/blog/san-franciscos-regulat...

franklampard 6y ago

What about great weather and food

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago

A local government is only as good as its people. It's people squandered it, though forcing egregious zoning regulations that's leading to the exodus. They claimed profits to the point where it damaged their ability to collect further profits.

rmrfstar 6y ago
Isn't SF wildly corrupt? Do the puppet masters bear any responsibility for the outcomes they orchestrate? Or is stewardship an obsolete concept?
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
  Assessing through the lens of strictly zoning laws, I don't think they've done anything wrong. If we (as a society) say zoning is controlled by local governments, and not the state government, then they are free to vote in people that pass (what I view) as draconian zoning policy. My criticism of zoning is, historically, it has been used to keep certain groups of people out of certain geographic areas.
- programd 6y ago
  Yes SF is apparently wildly corrupt. There's an ongoing FBI probe which seems to show that a wide swath of top level city public works employees have been involved in some sort of corruption scandal. The latest revelation is about the former mayor Ed Lee who died last year. Follow the links in the article for all the tentacles in this farce. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/Former-S-F-Mayor-Ed-Lee-code-name-35-15777827.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/Forme...

ummonk 6y ago

The ban on non-competes was pretty instrumental to allowing the startup revolution to occur somewhere in California.

m463 6y ago

I believe that is incorrect. California has laws that make it safe and easy for employees to go form a startup at the drop of a hat. In California, regardless of their employee contract, employees own the inventions: - made in their own time - made without using the employers equipment or technology Other states (Texas?) give employers an enormous amount of power over their employees, even giving them rights to the ideas in their heads.

sulam 6y ago

> Tech in SFBA reminds me of the Resource curse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse). Okay, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here because you said "reminds [you]", not that it _is_ in fact the Resource curse. However, you must acknowledge that the Resource Curse doesn't describe the SF Bay Area _at all_. We have the richest real estate in country, some of the highest earning zipcodes in the country, employment rate most of the country would love to have, etc. There's no "curse" here, as defined in the economic sense.