The Silicon Boys: And Their Valley of Dreams

Gold gave birth to the modern California in the 1850s. Now Silicon Valley, California is the "wild west" of the late-20th century. The new frontier is cyberspace and the new gold is silicon. Mix together obsessed engineers, marketeers, venture capitalists and even a lawyer or two with nobody in charge except rampant capitalism and you get the "Silicon Boys"; including "The Woz", Bill Gates and others who set up companies worth billions of dollars that became household names - Apple, Microsoft, Intel and Oracle. This book introduces the venture capitalists who adopted the philosophy that you can only lose your money once but you can also borrow it again to make a return of 1000 times your investment. It also reveals the mistake that cost IBM $100 billion and got Bill Gates started; how Oracle started on $2000 in 1977 and is now worth $35 billion; those who didn't make it.