Silicon Valley and the field of entrepreneurship

Silicon Valley and the field of entrepreneurship are complementary attributes to each other. Silicon Valley is a homemade name given to some corresponding parts of Santa Clara Valley. It is positioned in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California. The valley encompasses various cities like Los Altos, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Santa Clara, and San Jose. The valley is blessed with the abundance of silicon, a chemical required to manufacture semiconductor computer chips. That’s what created a large field for entrepreneurship.Technology, computers, and the internet have always been the mainstay for development.The valley provided all the grounds for technological advancement and entrepreneurship.

Earlier the Valley was appreciated for its fruit orchards such as apricots, prunes, and almonds, and was referred to as the “Valley of Heart’s Delight”. The moniker of Silicon Valley was popularised in the 1970s by an American journalist Don Hoefler. The inception of business activities in the valley from the engineering of the semiconductor computer chips has now set a benchmark in the IT industry. The valley, by now, has become a hub for hi-tech companies. There are more than 2000 hi-tech companies settled in the valley among which more than 30 are the headquarters of Forbes’ 1000. The valley alone accounts for almost 60 per cent of total hi-tech employment in the United States. The median salaries at the highest paying companies in the valley range from $133,000 to $171,000.

The valley has enough of the infrastructure required to take up entrepreneurship. It is well endowed with schools, universities, and research and development programs, transport and communication facilities, supporting industries, and logistic support. Inexorably, the valley has a larger potential for expansion business in different segments. One of the major issues faced by the employees in the region is housing. Since there is overcrowding of employees, the valley is running short of housing. Driven by the shortage of housing, the prices have reached unmatched highs. The housing crisis creates even more scope for the real estate sector. Another mainstream issue of the hi-tech companies in the region is the obtainability of skilled labour. More than 27 per cent of its labour comes from India and China. At the same time, more than half of the startups in the valley are established by immigrants.

Despite having a less technical workforce of its own, Silicon Valley stands first in the battle to dominate the IT industry. Since the inception of the first few hi-tech companies like Shockley Semiconductor Labs, Hewlett-Packard, Fairchild, and Intel, the valley has been swamped with the numerous entrepreneurship ventures.

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Manshi Chauhan