What is Silicon Valley? In this video, I walk through the original definition of the term Silicon Valley, a brief history of Silicon Valley, and touch on other meanings of the name Silicon Valley.

There is a ton of confusion around this topic because the term is used in different contexts to mean different things.

The term was originally used by engineers in the South San Francisco Bay Area of California to refer to the Santa Clara Valley, which had become a major hub for semiconductor manufacturing, a salient material for which was silicon, not to be confused with silicone, which as Sir Mix-A-Lot has taught us is the salient material for parts “made for toys.” Geddit?!

The name Silicon Valley was introduced widely to the public by a tech reporter named Don Hoefler writing for the publication Electronic News, popularized the term Silicon Valley USA in 1971. A three-part series on the "history of the semiconductor industry in the Bay Area."

Let’s take a step back and look at that history and see why and how this area become such a strong tech hub. Back in 1956, William Shockley, who won a Nobel prize with two buddies for their pioneering work with transistors, left the legendary tech lab Bell Labs in New Jersey and set up shop to commercialize his inventions. He pick Mountain View, CA, known now as the home of Google and startup accelerator Y Combinator for his company, Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. He was notoriously hard to work with and before long, eight of his key folks left Shockley to form Fairchild Semiconductor (with the financial and other support of industrialist Sherman Fairchild), itself legendary in the annals of tech history for making integrated circuits commercially viable. Alumni from Fairchild went on to found companies like Intel, Nvidia, and an absolute ton more. As this momentum built, Stanford University helped pour fuel on the tech fire, with its close proximity and strong engineering programs, becoming a central institution in development of tech in the region. Spurring on this nascent industry was the Department of Defense, which in 1957, following the Soviet launch of the satellite Sputnik, was a critical funder of Fairchild by Eisenhower. The first transistors went into things like B-70 bombers and minuteman missiles. The industry grew tremendously over time and led to the creation of new industries like personal computing and companies like Apple, named after a visit by founder Steve Jobs to a fruit orchard (it also didn’t hurt that the name was ahead of his previous employer, Atari, in the phone book, but that’s a convo for another day).

When used in its original context, Silicon Valley does not refer to other areas, such as San Francisco proper, the city, which itself has become a major tech hub in its own right and is just down the road from the Valley.

But why then do people refer to companies in San Francisco or even LA or Boston, or NY as “Silicon Valley” companies?

The reason is that the term is sometimes used as a catch-all for the tech community in the United States. While it may not perfectly reflect Hoefler’s meaning, it gives you a quick mental image of what the user is talking about. There are some people who are sticklers for proper usage and others who just don’t care that much.

The name Silicon Valley has also led to a number of other names emerging to refer to the tech communities in other cities and countries, like Silicon Alley to refer to the tech scene in New York, Silicon Beach for LA, Silicon Prairie for Kansas City, Silicon Roundabout for London, and so on.

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