This book was written out of fascination about how Silicon Valley became and continues to be the absolute world leader in innovative entrepreneurship and pioneering hightech startups. The Valley gave birth to a number of amazingly successful companies that changed the world and changed our lifestyle. And continues to do so. Apple, Google, Oracle, Yahoo, eBay, Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, all immensely impacted our societies, our economies, our workplaces, and our personal lives. Their impact is felt across generations, cultures, and nations. The power of social media that is generated by the widely adopted ICT products, services, and networks of these hightech giants is unparalleled and even spans continents. The rise of the smartphone led to a mobile apps revolution that created a phenomenal boost in startups which will ‒ again ‒ change the way we do business, the way we work, the way we travel, and the way we communicate. New and equally innovative ventures eagerly entered the perpetually competitive Silicon Valley arena such as Dropbox, Uber, Airbnb, SpaceX, Tesla, and many others. These new ventures also penetrated new sectors including health, biomedical technology, artificial intelligence, cleantech, sustainable transportation, space, drones and robots, machine learning, cloud computing and big data, self-driving cars, and the Internet of Things. The Silicon Valley technology portfolio is impressive and manages to renew itself constantly.

With the highest concentration of startups in the world, Silicon Valley is Planet Startup. A corridor of about sixty miles between San Francisco and San Jose, squeezed in between Interstate 280 and Highway 101. An area of about 1,800 square miles (0.05% of the USA) and a population of almost 3 million (almost 1% of the USA). Located in the San Mateo and Santa Clara counties in the Bay Area, the Valley links towns such as Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, and Santa Clara that house the headquarters of iconic hightech companies and thousands of startups who dream of reaching the same echelon. Not a particularly nice region, at least not with respect to architecture, history or nature as it is dominated by long strips of typically American shopping centers and offices, connected by a crowded El Camino Real.