Silicon Valley as a Business Location

Silicon Valley is probably one of the best-known business locations in the world for the high-tech, highly sensitive computer industry. In IT terms, this is where you find the crème de la crème of the industry. The area around the San Francisco Bay in northern California got its famous name from silicon, the semimetal used so widely in technology.

Silicon Valley is home not only to successful, world-famous software companies like Facebook, Google and eBay; in hardware, too, every big name in the world is here. Apple, like HP before it, chose this location, which is also home to the renowned Stanford University. The private university is one of the wealthiest in the world, with an endowment of several billion dollars. Many well-known Nobel laureates studied and graduated here. Known for its richly funded research, the university was founded by the Stanford couple in the 19th century and today ranks among the most famous elite universities in the world. If you study here, you have made it. Stanford is also credited as a birthplace of DSL technology, which lets us surf the internet. So is it any surprise that companies like Apple or Microsoft chose to set up in the Valley? Hewlett Packard did the pioneering work of settling in this famous area. The company was founded in a garage in the Valley in 1939 and today is one of the best-known and financially strongest companies in the world.

Conditions were, and still are, close to ideal for high-tech companies: thanks to the influence of the nearby technology- and research-focused universities, the Valley is made for developing new ideas and innovations.

The arrival of so many high-tech companies has also taken a toll on the surrounding environment, as the use of toxic metals and liquids polluted it heavily. Some of these substances seeped into the groundwater, prompting a rethink in how things were manufactured. Many companies still pay huge sums today to clean up the contaminated sites, which are mostly cleaned and restored by those who caused the damage. Groundwater quality has since improved considerably.

Silicon Valley is not the right location for every company, though. The US is not the only place that can handle cutting-edge technology; Europe now has many locations that are popular with founders, with London at the very top of the list. Beyond its distinctive English charm, the city has plenty more to offer. If the USA is calling you directly, you will find an overview of the common US business entities and forming a company in California on our site, with more articles regularly under News.