Sputnik, Hippies and the Disruptive Technology of Silicon Valley

The TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2013 Hackathon at San Francisco Design Center. Jeff Bottari/TechCrunch via Flickr/CC

Sit down and talk with anyone about technology and you’ll have little trouble arguing that the San Francisco Bay Area is the quintessential location for tech startups. The area offers unparalleled access to high quality engineers, venture capitalists and superb universities. But the reason this particular spot ended up at the heart of the technology industry might surprise you, and it all starts with Sputnik.

The seminal event was the spark that ignited Silicon Valley’s innovative, risk-taking culture more than 50 years ago, and it has truly shaped the way our lives have been and will continue to be enhanced by technology. If not for Sputnik, we would not have witnessed the massive technology innovations that spawned from Fairchild Semiconductors and “Fairchildren” companies like Intel, AMD and NVIDIA. Apple, Google, Oracle, Uber, Twitter, Facebook and many other disruptive technology companies would not exist.

Still more industry-disrupting companies will be born in the Bay Area over the next decade. What Uber has done to the taxi industry is the just the tip of the iceberg. Bay Area innovation will disrupt countless industry verticals with Google and Tesla disrupting the transportation industry with self-driving cars. Then you have Twitter disrupting the media industry; Facebook disrupting the communications industry; LinkedIn disrupting the human resources industry; Salesforce disrupting the political and customer relationship management industries; and many emerging startups disrupting consumer markets via the Internet of Things (IOT) movement.

Silicon Valley has shaped our lives in so many ways that we don’t realize. One can easily argue that Barrack Obama is president partially as a result of embracing social media technologies and Salesforce’s cloud based software for campaign management. The advent of real-time data and communication allowed him to target specific regions for campaigning and reach out to tech-savvy voters across the country.

We also can’t forget the incredibly open nature of the Bay Area, which has led to unprecedented sharing of information and empowering technologies. During the hippie movement of the 60s, Bay Area technology companies became more open minded and embraced the open-source movement and the sharing of ideas. This unparalleled culture has been critical to innovation and the exceptional speed at which new companies have been and will continue to be founded.

Additionally, this open nature mentality has led to a culture that embraces risk-taking where failure is seen as a learning experience and — unlike in other global economic hubs — is not shameful. As a result, risk-taking is embedded in the DNA of Silicon Valley.

Other regions have tried to emulate what the Bay Area has done with little success. The region’s technological prowess isn’t just due to great minds and high quality schools like Stanford and Berkeley, among others. If this were the case then Oxford and Cambridge would make London a dominant tech center.

Silicon Valley cannot be replicated without the 50-plus years of history it has taken to develop the ideal fertile technology crescent. So if you want to work in technology and change the world, move to the San Francisco Bay Area.

Chris Haroun is a Partner with ARTIS Ventures and a technology analyst focusing on the Software and Internet sectors.

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