2012 was a huge year for Silicon Valley.
Facebook went public, Marissa Mayer joined Yahoo, laws changed to foster new industries, enterprise startups got hot, and billion-dollar companies were formed and acquired.
Now, after months of research, debate, and more research, we're happy to present the latest installment of the Silicon Valley 100, Business Insider's authoritative compilation of the people who did the coolest things in Silicon Valley this year. That means people who...
During the 2012 presidential campaign, Silicon Valley tech businesses overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama with their dollars.
We just spent a lot of time in Silicon Valley, asking around to find out who the top new CEOs are in technology.
What follows is a round of the executives of the companies that people are most excited about, and what we've learned about them.
Like clockwork, there's usually a new batch of startups everyone is talking about every month or so.
Sometimes they're older startups that are finally finding their feet.
Sometimes they are just coming out of an incubator like Y Combinator.
Either way, everyone is pretty excited about them.
We spent the past week hanging out in Silicon Valley. Here are the startups people are talking about right now.
Last year, the Startup Genome Project was created to "crack the innovation code and increase the success rate of startups."
Since then, researchers have worked with more than 13,000 companies to determine success and failure factors of startups all over the world.
Startup Genome pulled out 22 findings that show the benefits and limitations of working in different startup hubs. Silicon Valley, it found, was the largest startup ecosystem, followed by New York and London.
The research seems to suggest that Silicon Valley is still the best place to start a company. New York City does have a few upsides though. For one, it has twice as many female founders as Silicon Valley.
The Bay Area tech scene is all about startups. But which ones are worth your attention?
We looked at the startups trending on AngelList, asked entrepreneurs in the valley what all their friends are talking about, and ran down the most buzzed-about companies from recent demo days and conferences to put together this list of companies you should be paying attention to.
Groupon, which already has about 200 engineers working out of its Palo Alto office, is looking to hire as many as 100 more, boosting the Chicago-based company's headcount out West, the company tells us.
Groupon is going to host a big recruiting event for the office later this spring. The company is already buying billboards along the highways running from San Francisco to the South Bay.
There are two paths you can take to get started on your road to riches. You can either try to get hired by the next ‘Facebookesque’ startup, take a haircut in salary, and hope that your stock options are worth something one day, or you can create your own company. If there’s a way to have an early failure, such as a firing because you’re too young or inexperienced, you’re already on the path to mega-wealth and investor funding. Bonus points go to those who get fired from a company that they created. Lots of failure = lots of success.
Although some may argue that there will never be another community that boasts the same entrepreneurial spirit and access to business opportunities as California’s Silicon Valley, there’s a growing recognition in the tech community that these “hot spots” are – in fact – popping up around the world.
