silicon

Silicon Valley's new show: A reality check

It's all right watching a reality show and accepting it as mere entertainment.

It's quite another thing to face that reality and decide whether the show truly reflects it.

So before sitting down to watch "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley," Bravo's real husbanding of the tech world, I went to see what these people were like face to face.

Somehow I secured a ticket to the red carpet party in a place that had a rather gray, sticky carpet in San Francisco's Marina district.

I took with me my 6-foot blonde Amazonian bodyguard, Angelina, who is … Read more

The secret to creating the next Silicon Valley

New York. London. Los Angeles. Dublin. Chicago. Berlin. Every one of these cities (and more) have been mentioned as having the potential to become "the next Silicon Valley," a new technology hub that could rival the Bay Area's dominance when it comes to tech.

All of these cities are working hard to compete with Silicon Valley. London just hired a prominent Facebooker to become the CEO of its technology project. Dublin has f.ounders and the Dublin Web Summit. New York has a collection of high-profile tech companies, including Foursquare, Gilt Groupe, Fab, Tumblr and Quirky. Chicago … Read more

Your first adorable snippets of Silicon Valley reality show

You might decide, on viewing these two clips from the new Bravo TV show "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley" that words fail you.

Please don't be alarmed.

Words sometimes know when they have been defeated. They realize that there are occasional moments in life when they can and will have no effect.

So please just click the play buttons here and marvel, say, at the straight face of VC Dave McClure, as he examines a pitch from a couple of very beautiful people -- whose words will make up for your lack of them.

Yes, one of them finds … Read more

Silicon Valley rougher to business than Seattle, Austin -- report

Silicon Valley's economy seems to be recovering more quickly than the rest of the nation's, with employers hiring and venture capitalists offering sunny predictions. There's even a new reality show based here.

It may not last. A new analysis of how business-friendly states are -- released today by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation -- shows that California is way at the bottom. The Golden State ranks a dismal 48 out of 50.

"States do not institute tax policy in a vacuum," said Scott Drenkard and Joseph Henchman, the study's authors. "Every change to a … Read more

Silicon Valley's reality show: A new trailer of beauty

What it must be to be ugly and in tech.

What it must be to be, oh, in one's late 20s or even early 30s and be ugly and in tech.

How does anyone cope? The Valley shrinks must never go home to their VC lovers.

This obvious truth is underlined by a new trailer for Bravo TV's forthcoming reality show about Silicon Valley -- which enjoys Randi Zuckerberg as one of its producers.… Read more

Fate of Silicon Valley bleak, according to silicon CEOs

Chief executives from Intel and Cypress Semiconductor say Silicon Valley is in a bad state.

Literally. The basic problem is California, according to recent comments from Intel CEO Paul Otellini and Cypress CEO T.J. Rogers.

Speaking at the Intel Capital Global Summit on Wednesday, Otellini said Intel has not added a job in California in at least a decade, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

He characterized California's future as bleak for businesses. "We're so close to screwing it up, it's pathetic...I worry that we have to hit the abyss before … Read more

Planes write out pi over the skies of San Francisco Bay Area

Many denizens of the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley noticed a long series of cloudy numbers in the skies around noon on Wednesday, September 12. No, their coffee wasn't spiked with hallucinogens.

The ephemeral event, known as Pi in the Sky, utilized five aircraft with dot-matrix skywriting technology to write out a thousand numbers of the beloved mathematical constant pi (3.14159..) at a 10,000-foot altitude. If that wasn't impressive enough, the numerals of pi written in the sky each stood nearly a quarter-mile tall, stretched for a 100-mile loop, and undoubtedly caused mass inspiration and confusion all at once. … Read more

Y Combinator's stars shine at Demo Day

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Twice a year, Sand Hill Road, the most important hub for venture capitalists in the world, empties out for a day. But it's not vacation that pulls away all the VCs -- it's Y Combinator Demo Day.

At the Computer History Museum here today, the heart of the tech investing universe came together once again to see, up close and personal, what the 74 companies in the summer class of Y Combinator have been working on all summer.

As is the case with any demo day, there were plenty of misses. But given Y Combinator'… Read more

Entrepreneur sees tech startup potential in Arab world

In a region plagued by religious tensions and violent political strife, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Nima Adelkhani sees economic opportunity.

Through Progress in Technology Middle East, a company that launches today, Adelkhani plans to connect startups in the Arab world with the American technology industry's movers and shakers, part of a larger plan to help a fledgling ecosystem grow and foster stability in the area.

But let's be clear -- Adelkhani doesn't see any of the 27 businesses he is working with as charity cases. These are ideas that bring him goosebumps because he believes they are original … Read more