Silicon Valley, every mention
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tap a year for its mentions
every year anyone Guy Raz 113Anthony Wood 13Nolan Bushnell 12Adi Tatarko 10Sal Khan 9Donnel Baird 9Tobias Lütke 7Joe Gebbia 7Rod Canion 6Morgan DeBaun 6
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Silicon Valley comes up
Bobbie: Laura Modi. How a Baby Formula Startup Took Market Share From Two Industry Giants
- ▶ 35:18 Laura Modi And I hit up every Silicon Valley investor I knew.
- ▶ 50:15 Guy Raz I mean, on the one hand, I'm very sympathetic to this idea, because it's like, let's just get it out there and try it, and it's very much a Silicon Valley entrepreneurial in that spirit.
Shopify: Tobias Lütke. How a snowboarder built a $150 billion business (2019)
- ▶ 34:13 Tobias Lütke And so, um, I was like, okay, well, maybe I really should talk to venture capitalists, and that was the time I, I traveled to Silicon Valley to talk with VCs.
- ▶ 34:25 Guy Raz I better go to Silicon Valley, find a venture investor, who then can help me find a CEO. 4 times in the scene
- ▶ 46:20 Guy Raz So you, you go back out to Silicon Valley, you convince
NVIDIA: Jensen Huang. From near collapse to becoming the world’s biggest company
- ▶ 11:01 Jensen Huang Well, the way LSI Logic's business worked is they had all the technology, the tools, and they made the chips, but they would make it for somebody else who created computers, and so Sun Microsystems, and Silicon Graphics, and incredible…
Bobo’s: Beryl Stafford. A Single Mom Turns a Baking Project into a $100M Business
Netflix: Reed Hastings. “We’re Not a Family.” The Provocative Idea That Helped Build a Streaming Giant
- ▶ 35:59 Reed Hastings It was in Scotts Valley where Mark lives, which is partway between Santa Cruz and Silicon Valley.
- ▶ 54:03 Reed Hastings And lots of people were operating their Silicon Valley business that way, but none of them admitted it or not many.
Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder
- ▶ 20:01 Guy Raz So by 1979, I read, just three years in, there's like nine of these locations operating all over from, you know, Marin County all the way to Silicon Valley.
- ▶ 1:05:36 Joan Barnes Entrepreneurial types, young sort of wannabe Silicon Valley go-getters talking, and I heard them say, you know, a consumer company went public yesterday for quite a valuation.
Dollar Shave Club: Michael Dubin, From Zero to a Billion Dollar Exit in Five Years (December 2018)
- ▶ 51:21 Floyd Albee We're looking for a second location now, trying to figure out where to land in Silicon Valley somewhere, possibly LA, interested in New York, interested in Colorado, interested
Khan Academy: Sal Khan. From Tutoring His Cousins to Teaching the World For Free (September 2020)
- ▶ 14:51 Guy Raz So you, you moved to Silicon Valley, uh, to work, um, to California to, to, to work for Oracle, I guess.
- ▶ 16:47 Guy Raz So you decided to leave, um, Silicon Valley and the startup world for at least the time being, um, and go to business school. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 35:36 Sal Khan Um, we had moved out to Silicon Valley. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 52:52 Sal Khan and I didn't realize there was actually, there was a buzz about Khan Academy in Silicon Valley at the time that I didn't know about.
- ▶ 1:00:14 Sal Khan Um, so, you know, fully loaded costs in Silicon Valley, that'd be a million, million and a half dollars a year.
Advice Line with Randy Hetrick of TRX
- ▶ 49:06 Randy Hetrick It was kind of on the back of the first.com bubble burst, but there was an awful lot of, of kind of that thinking in the valley.
Nirav Tolia: Nextdoor. How neighborhood chatter went global
- ▶ 23:02 Nirav Tolia We went and joined Benchmark as entrepreneurs in residence together with the intent of starting a new company, but as part of that, I moved back to Silicon Valley, but, and I highly encourage entrepreneurs who are coming off of one journey…
- ▶ 41:50 Nirav Tolia I love this old expression in Silicon Valley, more companies die of indigestion than starvation.
- ▶ 54:27 Nirav Tolia And so, you know, they have a conversation, and in Silicon Valley's conversations are kind of interesting.
Carlton Calvin: Razor. The wild rise, collapse, and reinvention of a mobile toy empire.
- ▶ 44:49 Carlton Calvin You know, and it had something to do with, you know, the internet coming, and they were used in Silicon Valley, you know, in warehouses, and, you know.
Advice Line: Playing to Your Strengths
Madison Reed: Amy Errett
- ▶ 21:20 Amy Errett The top of whatever mountain there is in Silicon Valley, and I'm thinking, I'm smart.
WHOOP: Will Ahmed
Figma: Dylan Field
- ▶ 8:42 Dylan Field And yeah, I kept getting pulled back into sort of Silicon Valley startups as something that I felt very engaged with.
- ▶ 39:35 Dylan Field Well, we, we validated that, so we went out and, uh, found all these companies in Silicon Valley, in San Francisco especially, and we talked with, you know, I don't know, it must have been dozens of companies, we'd show them Figma, and…
Calm: Alex Tew and Michael Acton Smith
- ▶ 39:16 Alex Tew Moved to San Francisco, learn a lot from the Silicon Valley culture and meet lots of interesting people, which I did.
- ▶ 49:59 Michael Acton Smith And I think we both realized that Silicon Valley was the place to build this business. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 56:19 Guy Raz It's like there's a lot of money flying around Silicon Valley for all kinds of businesses.
Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie
- ▶ 17:23 Hamish McKenzie Yeah, this is 2012, 20 13, where people in Silicon Valley sort of knew about this guy Elon Musk, but he hadn't become an outside phenomenon yet.
- ▶ 49:41 Chris Best And then the other one that I think about a lot is like, there's this saying in Silicon Valley that is keep the main thing, the main thing.
Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström
- ▶ 37:50 Niklas Zennström So, so Bill Draper is like, you know, he's one of the, I guess, first generation of Silicon Valley venture capitalists.
- ▶ 1:05:15 Niklas Zennström San Francisco Silicon Valley. 2 times in the scene
SpotHero: Mark Lawrence
- ▶ 36:49 Guy Raz But I have to imagine with all these other competitors out there, a lot of the money in Silicon Valley was going to those competitors.
- ▶ 45:30 Guy Raz It's on Sand Hill Road and in Silicon Valley.
- ▶ 48:14 Mark Lawrence And meetings in the valley were extremely demoralizing because people would say, hey, like, you know, I've heard great things about you. 2 times in the scene
Advice Line with Joe Gebbia of Airbnb
- ▶ 28:10 Joe Gebbia It's not Silicon Valley, but there's, there are investors for food and beverage, obviously.
- ▶ 50:17 Joe Gebbia And so, we get introduced to 20 investors in Silicon Valley.
Advice Line with Steve Case of AOL
- ▶ 3:39 Steve Case People growing up in other parts of the country feel like they have to leave where they are and go someplace else, and so that does, you know, create a magnet for talent in places like Silicon Valley.
Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae
Viator: Rod Cuthbert
Paperless Post: James and Alexa Hirschfeld
- ▶ 21:34 James Hirschfeld Um, kind of, you know, tried and true Silicon Valley venture investors, I think.
Groupon and Descript: Andrew Mason
- ▶ 57:17 Andrew Mason So it was never like part of the career path, but it was like an interesting way to, to sink into living in Silicon Valley.
- ▶ 1:04:51 Andrew Mason Technology companies in Silicon Valley building podcasting software, and as we talked to investors, um, there just wasn't a lot of enthusiasm about it.
Twitter, Medium and Blogger: Ev Williams
- ▶ 12:39 Ev Williams But of course, by the time I was like, every, I was consuming every bit of information there was in every magazine and on the web about Silicon Valley.
Weee!: Larry Liu
Poshmark: Manish Chandra
- ▶ 4:06 Guy Raz Manish got to Silicon Valley in the early 19 nineties, where he saw the rise and
- ▶ 6:55 Guy Raz And, uh, you finished the degree and that, that I guess at that, that point you, you're thinking, uh, all right, you know, like I'm gonna, I'm gonna go toward the technology of Silicon Valley.
- ▶ 25:25 Manish Chandra So I went, drove around, most of my investors were in Silicon Valley, and collected small checks like 10,000 dollars, 15,000 dollars, enough to make one or two payrolls at that time, so we could survive.
- ▶ 29:11 Manish Chandra And also they wanted to have a presence in, um, in Silicon Valley.
- ▶ 34:37 Manish Chandra I realized that Silicon Valley, we are good at a lot of things, but managing inventory is not our forte. 2 times in the scene
The peril (and promise) of AI with Tristan Harris: Part 1
- ▶ 2:05 Tristan Harris And I think there's an ethos that both he and I come from of the original days of Silicon Valley that is aspirational, you know, in which computers can be a bicycle for the mind, a bicycle for human creativity, extending human expression.
KiwiCo: Sandra Oh Lin
reCAPTCHA and Duolingo: Luis von Ahn (2020)
Full body preventive health care with Andrew Lacy of Prenuvo
- ▶ 1:49 Andrew Lacy And so when I came back to Silicon Valley, I had one rule.
- ▶ 10:27 Andrew Lacy I, I put money in, and then we raised some money from a bank, actually, believe it or not, in order to bootstrap this clinic in Silicon Valley. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 27:55 Andrew Lacy When we open in Silicon Valley,
- ▶ 32:26 Guy Raz The biohackers of the, of the Silicon Valley.
Everlane: Michael Preysman
Leading through radical change with Julia Hartz of Eventbrite
- ▶ 24:23 Julia Hartz I mean, in Silicon Valley, being an older company is sort of like being an older person.
A biometric smart gun with Kai Kloepfer of Biofire
- ▶ 7:13 Kai Kloepfer Yeah, basically I ended up receiving that 50,000 dollar grant from a group called the smart tech challenges foundation, where, uh, basically a group of folks in Silicon Valley came together to say, Hey, we should be investing into…
Powering cars with solar energy with Steve Fambro of Aptera Motors
- ▶ 16:21 Steve Fambro I still remember, uh, Bill Gurley, uh, prominent Silicon Valley VC at the time.
When AI is your personal tutor with Sal Khan of Khan Academy
When trucks drive themselves with Chris Urmson of Aurora
- ▶ 38:17 Chris Urmson Um, unlike a lot of Silicon Valley companies, we have spent a lot of time engaging with the federal regulators and the state regulators, the DOTs and NHTSA and FMCSA, these are regulatory agencies of the federal government, and helping…
Tapping the heat beneath your feet with Kathy Hannun of Dandelion Energy
- ▶ 27:52 Kathy Hannun Yeah, to your point, when I was first pitching the company with our initial seed round, and I would pitch to venture investors in Silicon Valley, I didn't get a lot of traction.
HIBT Lab! Nas Company: Nuseir Yassin
Twilio: Jeff Lawson
- ▶ 11:12 Guy Raz You, you guys moved to Silicon Valley, to California, to pursue this idea, versity.com full time. 4 times in the scene
- ▶ 18:07 Jeff Lawson And then we get to College Club, and they move us from Silicon Valley down to San Diego, which is where they're based, and they have filed to go public in April of, of, of 2000, but the market has basically just closed.
- ▶ 44:18 Jeff Lawson I start flying down to meet with, uh, Silicon Valley investors, venture capitalists, and two things happen.
- ▶ 1:04:10 Guy Raz Silicon Valley or the golden era of tech is over, right?
HIBT Lab! Nuro: Dave Ferguson
- ▶ 0:57 Guy Raz Have been on the roads in Silicon Valley and in Houston, making deliveries with big name partners like Domino's and Kroger grocery stores.
- ▶ 14:42 Dave Ferguson It was very HBO Silicon Valley style.
Guayakí Yerba Mate: David Karr and Chris Mann
Roku: Anthony Wood
- ▶ 8:39 Anthony Wood And, um, then after college, when we moved out to Silicon Valley, she was the office manager for, for the new version of the company. 4 times in the scene
- ▶ 11:34 Anthony Wood Yeah, that's when I guess Silicon Valley became, like, a real place to me. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 16:25 Anthony Wood So I used to just sort of watch the prices of, you know, I, um, used to go to, back then, the Fry's was popular in, uh, Silicon Valley. 7 times in the scene
- ▶ 27:53 Guy Raz You don't need, you don't need to be, not everybody needs to be Steve Jobs to be successful in Silicon Valley. 2 times in the scene
Bluemercury: Marla and Barry Beck
- ▶ 27:00 Marla Beck We knew we needed more money, and so I went out to Silicon Valley in the fall of 99, you know, went to a bunch of firms where I had friends from business school, pitched them.
HIBT Lab! OpenAI: Sam Altman
- ▶ 14:04 Sam Altman Like, there's a thing about Silicon Valley, which is it's, it had not been that well geared towards the time and capital intensive science projects.
HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid
- ▶ 31:53 Shiza Shahid And I was, you know, living in Silicon Valley, investing, taking classes, and while it's, you know, a huge privilege to be able to support other entrepreneurs in small ways, I needed to go all in on something, and so I was definitely…
Roblox: David Baszucki
Twitch: Emmett Shear
- ▶ 24:31 Emmett Shear This is actually just how I would say a lot of angel investing in, in Silicon Valley or in this case in Cambridge, but like tech angel investing works.
- ▶ 28:08 Emmett Shear It's still now, but especially then, um, Silicon Valley.
- ▶ 1:03:51 Emmett Shear And I remember at the beginning, our point of view on management was actually, it was kind of, it was sort of common in the Valley at the time.
- ▶ 1:19:37 Emmett Shear And I've now been around the valley for 15 years, and I came here with a bunch of people who started making companies, and I don't know anyone who persisted and tried again and then tried, and then tried a new thing and then tried again
TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan
- ▶ 25:38 Leah Solivan I had no exposure still to Silicon Valley or what was happening.
- ▶ 40:12 Leah Solivan Even though most people thought it would not be worth doing, I felt like this is the connection to Silicon Valley.
HIBT Lab! BlocPower: Donnel Baird
- ▶ 33:20 Donnel Baird Yeah, but again, we have a mix of capital from Silicon Valley and Wall Street, and Silicon Valley, you don't really have to be profitable, as we're all learning. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 35:49 Donnel Baird I think in Silicon Valley, and this is why we had such a hard time raising capital initially, you know, look at Tesla, like they come out with the Roadster first, and it's like, I don't know, would it cost a hundred grand, 200 grand?
- ▶ 37:34 Guy Raz Like, this is not a problem that a couple of Silicon Valley VCs or, you know, or some billionaire philanthropist can solve. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 40:52 Donnel Baird So I think that innovation in America from as far as I can tell is funded by Silicon Valley venture capitalists. 6 times in the scene
PayPal: Max Levchin (Part 1 of 2)
- ▶ 1:23 Guy Raz It's not the computers or printers they made that matter, but the fact that David Packard and Bill Hewlett were pioneers who laid the foundation for what is now known as Silicon Valley.
- ▶ 20:45 Guy Raz How Max moves out to Silicon Valley, meets an up and coming small time investor named Peter Thiel, and starts a brand new business that initially goes absolutely nowhere.
- ▶ 24:02 Max Levchin Silicon Valley was chock full of venture capitalists that were interested in giving money to people like us.
- ▶ 29:53 Guy Raz So you go for breakfast at Hobie's, legendary, uh, Silicon Valley diner cafe.
- ▶ 38:57 Max Levchin And then we started pitching people kind of in the outskirts of the broader Silicon Valley.
- ▶ 43:30 Max Levchin So the sort of the backdrop, Peter and I and Kenny and Luke are all kind of roaming around Silicon Valley trying to see if there's demand for the software that we're building.
- ▶ 49:05 Max Levchin I think they thought they did, but actually funny enough, one of my more memorable Silicon Valley inaugural moments, I went to the DigiCash shutdown party.
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