What's interesting about Silicon Valley?

For some political and business celebrities visiting Silicon Valley (especially those whose GDP is greater than or equal to California), most of your itinerary will include the following contents: First, have dinner or lunch with the founders of some or all of the following companies: Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter, and some well-known VCS. If you have time, the president of Stanford University may accompany you to visit the campus. You may also go to Intel or a high-tech company and take a group photo in front of impressive equipment. This "standard trip to Silicon Valley" is very similar to going to Disney to explore the jungle and then thinking that you have been to Africa. Because you and your entourage can't tell the difference between "a big company that used to be a startup" and "a real startup", you can't see why today's Silicon Valley came into being.

If you didn't come by your own 747 plane, you may need this guide to know what you should see in Silicon Valley (in the long run, the area mentioned here extends to the area along the way from Santa Clara to San Francisco). This guide describes some things you can "see" or "do" in Silicon Valley, which is mainly suitable for two types of visitors: "I want to visit (for example, outside the Facebook/Google /Zynga/ Apple building)" or "I want to know what happened in those buildings and come to work in Silicon Valley". Traditional tourist attractions can directly refer to the travel manual, so I won't go into details here.

Hacker's guide to silicon valley travel

Silicon Valley is not so much a place as a state of mind. There are no huge monuments and magnificent buildings, no ancient relics, and no tour groups about companies or VC. From Santa Clara to San Francisco, it is a 45-mile continuous residential area. What happened in this small land in the past 50 years can almost be described as "the Big Bang of Entrepreneurship", much like Athens civilization, Florence Renaissance, or 1920 Paris.

California Dreaming

On the way to Silicon Valley, you can look at paul graham's prose and jessic Livingston's Entrepreneur. Remember to look at the unknown history of Silicon Valley and learn stories that local people don't know.

One of Palo Alto's beating hearts.

Set the starting point of the journey in Atul, and stand at the intersection of Emerson Street and Qian Ning Avenue. You will see a bronze milestone where the vacuum transistor was born. Go to 367 Addison Street, and you will see Hewlett-Packard's famous garage. Bonus: You can understand the importance of these three places and why HP rewrote the history of Silicon Valley.

Walking around downtown Atul at noon, you should see energetic engineers arguing on the way to dinner. Sitting in Coupa Café, a cafe full of entrepreneurs, there is always team building or financing here (the noisy and crowded space makes you simply can't listen). Or go to the university coffee shop and penumbra cream shop to see the engineers in the business; You can also have breakfast at Il Fornaio and observe the daily work of VC and recruiters.

Stanford-brain

Drive south along University Avenue until you reach Palm Avenue. Park the car and walk around Stanford campus. Then go to the Polytechnic University and pay attention to the names of those buildings: Gates, Allen, Moore, Varian, Hugh Park Jung Su, Bao, Clark, plattner, Yang, Huang and so on. Plus: You know who they are and how they founded the company. You can also name a building, of course, after you make 30 million yuan in IPO.

Terman Engineering Building (now demolished) is the starting point of scientific and technological entrepreneurship. Try to listen to Tom byers, Kathy Eisenhardt, tina seelig or other lecturers' speeches on science and technology entrepreneurship.

Go to the engineering school to attend a free course on the idea of entrepreneurial leaders. Check the calendar of Stanford Venture Network or the base to see where there are free activities. Visit Stanford Student Entrepreneurship Lab, and you can learn about recent activities through computer forums. If you have time, you can take a walk on the mountain road behind the school, thanks to the CIA fund.

Mountain view-the second beating heart

Then drive to Mountain View, walk along the Colosseum Park Road behind Google and see the buildings along the way. They are basically established by a company that has closed down, and there is another company that used to be the hottest in Silicon Valley-Silicon Map (Shelley's Ossie Mandas can be said to be an ode to the creative destruction of Silicon Valley again and again).

The next stop in this block is the Computer History Museum, which is small but important. This museum has almost all the cultural relics of the computer age and pre-computer age (you can look at the museum's activity calendar in advance). After watching it, it is close to Moffett Field, and you can take a sausage airship to visit Silicon Valley. If the weather is fine and the funds are sufficient, it will definitely be an unforgettable trip.

Murphy's field is next to Lockheed missiles and space, the core of the dark side of Silicon Valley. Lockheed/KLOC-came to Silicon Valley in 0/956. In just four years, the number of its engineers increased from 0 to 20,000. Their assembly lines in Sunnyvale and R2 have produced three generations of submarine-launched ballistic missiles and spy satellites for the CIA, the National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Bureau. Of course, people refused to visit them. When you drive past shockley Semiconductor, think of every Silicon Valley chip company that has been derived from this company. If it is not dead, it is the same age as Lockheed's factory.

At lunch time, go to Castro Street in Mountain View and you can see another entrepreneurial hotspot in Silicon Valley. In the evening, you can go to Redstone Cafe and see programmers who are refreshing themselves with coffee at work. If you want to visit other museums or semiconductor-related things, you can drive to Santa Clara to visit the Intel Museum.

Shashan road-venture capital

When we celebrate that Silicon Valley has become the center of technological innovation, we should know that this is not the whole story. Entrepreneurship and innovation broke out here because of the rise of venture capital. It can be said that VC is the same crazy half in the entrepreneurial ecosystem (VC gathered in Silicon Valley accounts for 42% of the country).

You can see venture capitalists having breakfast at Bucks Restaurant on woodside Road, and listening to them complain about their recent deals in Village Pub or Madera at lunch. You can also go to the 3000 restaurant at 3000 Shashan Road, the old "VC Center", and then walk around. Look at the company catalogue of these buildings, and you may be disappointed with the boring appearance of these buildings (some venture capitalists have left the birthplace of Dune Road to open offices in Artu or San Francisco in order to be closer to the project). Bonus: You can stand outside the building, put a sandwich board that says you are willing to work for the stock, and distribute your execution plan and PPT printed version to people.

Drive to Artur's house where Facebook started its business (yes, just like in the movie) and Google's first office in Menlo Park (the new headquarters of Facebook is also in Menlo Park).

Then drive to Cupertino and stroll around Apple's campus. Although Apple is not allowed to visit, there are Apple stores open to the public. Unlike other Apple stores, computers and mobile phones are not sold here, and it is the only place in the world that sells Apple T-shirts and hats.

South San Francisco-a paradise of biotechnology

If you continue to drive north, you will pass by the south of San Francisco, which is famous for the "industrial city" written on the hillside south of the airport. In the area of two square miles, there are 72 biotechnology companies, including Genentech, Elan Pharmaceutical, Amgen, Cell Genesys, Cybernetics, Rigel, Onyx Pharmaceutical and Catalyst Bioscience.

San Francisco)-the lifestyle of start-ups

Continue your trip to San Francisco and find a place to park in South Park in the south of the market area. SoMa (south of the market) is the birthplace and gathering place of Web 2.0 startups. If you are single and live in San Francisco, you need to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of walking or cycling to and from work more than other parts of Silicon Valley. Café Centro is the South Park version of Coupa Café, and you can also eat American roast chicken with cheese (you are only a few blocks away from San Francisco Giant Ball Park at this time).

Four blocks to the north is Moscone Center, the main convention center in San Francisco. Go to the exhibition, even if you are not in that industry.

Berkeley

When Stanford was a university of science and technology in the 1950s and 1960s, Berkeley, located across the Bay Area in the east of San Francisco, was very busy. Why? Because they are studying nuclear weapons. Then Berkeley began to follow suit, and entrepreneurship soon blossomed in various departments. Take a look at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where there are Nobel Prizes, museums and many other things worth seeing. Then visit 1964 places where the freedom of speech movement took place: Sproul Square, Sather Gate and Telegraph Avenue. You can also visit Corey Building, Wozniak Building and Soda Building to see the birthplace of CAD, BSDUnix and MEMS.

The essence of Silicon Valley lies in communication and interaction rather than high-rise buildings.

The reason why Silicon Valley is what it is today is because of the people there and the communication and interaction between people. This can't be achieved by sitting in the car or just walking on the street. You need to walk into those buildings and participate in those conversations. Here are some suggestions on how to do this:

If you want to have the ultimate entrepreneurial experience, then help those who finance VC to carry their bags. Then be a fly on the wall and listen carefully.

If you want to really feel the culture here, apply for job interviews with three Silicon Valley companies, even if you don't want to work in any of them. During the interview, you will learn more about the corporate culture of Silicon Valley than any sightseeing tour.

Attend at least three technical gatherings in Silicon Valley or San Francisco, and look for them in Meetup or Plancast (there is a lot of content in Meetup, you can search for "startup" and limit the results to San Francisco, Artu and Santa Clara).

See the gathering of iOS developers, hackers and founders. 106Miles, Ideakick. Take part in the hackathon. Subscribe to the Silicon Valley Edition of Entrepreneurship Digest before going.

Find a real startup, where 3 to 10 people work in a crowded space and sit there all afternoon. Help them write programs for free. There are many offices in San Francisco that share startups. It's easy to understand what it's like when you only have a few co-founders and don't have your own garage. Visits: Founders den, Sandbox Suites, Citizen Space, Parisoma Innovation, The Hub, Next Space, Rocket Space, Startup House, The Hatchery, People Browsr, Dolores Labs and DogPatch Labs. Click here to see more places in San Francisco.

Drive to G Studio in Sequoia City, Hacker Dojo in Mountain View City, and plug &; Play science and technology center. Semantic seeds of San Jose. Find more places to enjoy office space here.

Try to join Blackbox.vc, sandbox Networdk. See if there are any entrepreneurial weekends or SVForum activities in the Bay Area recently.

Infiltrated into the incubator base of SoMa (Market South) Center on the 9th floor of Townsend Street 153, and tried to be hired by 30 startup companies.

If you are trying to raise money or know angel investors, try to establish contact through AngelList before you go.

Try to use your entrepreneurial skills to join these activities: "Y-Combiner" dinner, demonstration day, 500 startups or Harrsion Metal activities. Participate in Techcrunch activities. Of course, attend a lean start-up party.

Find yourself a job.

Never leave.