Innovation, Technology, and Silicon Valley

U.S. Embassy Ankara Turkey

Who Am I? Aamer Khan US Diplomat – Foreign Service Officer (2011-Now) Engineer, Technologist & Entrepreneur (1993-2011) Electrical Engineer - METU/ODTU Ankara

Worked at: IBM, Rational Software, Hewlett Packard, and a few other companies.

Owned and Run: Silicon Valley Startups (1996-2002) Patents on software development processes, tools, and technology.

Expertise: Software Programming, Internet & Information Technology, Designing Software Development Tools, Managing Software Development Teams…. & now representing the United States as a diplomat

Our agenda today A brief history of Silicon Valley….

Why it exists… why in California and what were some of the triggering events.

Intertwined with a little about me…. because it might be relevant to fellow graduates of technical schools in Turkey.

And finally we want to look at what sustains American entrepreneurship?

Caveats I am an Engineer not a historian.

The story can be told with many different perspectives…. This is just one possible perspective.

I will not mention many things that you might consider an important part of the story….

The beginning…. 1946

Fredrick Terman1900-1982

Microwave Valley? Customer = Military Problem = Penetrating and disabling the USSR radar

network. Objective:

Signals Intelligence – to understand the USSR radar systems

Jammers – to disable the USSR radar systems Stealth – to reduce radar footprints of US aircraft

Solution: Microwave power tubes Electronically tunable High power, broad frequency range, and high speed

Stanford Industrial Park…. 1951

Semiconductors…. mid 1950s

William Shockley1910-1989

Integrated Circuits…. on Silicon Jack Kilby – Texas Instruments first

patent for an integrated circuit made on Germanium – 1959

Robert Noyce – Fairchild Semiconductor six months later made on Silicon – 1959

Componentization Miniaturization Mass production Low cost with increasing volume

Customer still the Government……. 1960s Aerospace Program is key motivator:

Apollo Program – Guidance Computer Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles – Guidance

Computer 1966 – 2632 computers in the U.S. of which 1967

work for the Defense Department. 1968 – 37% of the total integrated circuit market

is for US Aerospace Program 1961 - IBM has 81% share of world computer

market

But …. things are about to change

Microprocessor & Memory…. late 1960s

Gordon Moore1929 - Robert Noyce

1927 - 1990

FoundedJuly 18, 1968

1K DRAM1970

I4004 - Microprocessor1971

Storage 1970s

San Jose Research Lab

IBM Floppy Disk1971

IBM Winchester Hard Drive1973

First Successful Microcomputer

Apple Computer1976

Steve Jobs – 1955 - 2011Steve Wozniak – 1950 - Apple II

1977

Why did Apple succeed? Killer Application -- Electronic Spreadsheet

VisiCalc VisiCorp Dan Bricklin Personal Productivity Powerful Cost Savings

IBM & Microsoft IBM PC – 1981

Intel 8088 Off the shelf parts PC DOS 1.0

Time to market

MS-DOS 1.0 IBM PC Clones Q-DOS Very successful

Killer Application Lotus 1-2-3 Mitch Kapor 1983

First Successful Microcomputer

Venture Capital

1958 SBIC Act : Gov’t match private investment 3:11978 - Capital Gains Slashed – 49.5% to 28%1979 - Employee Retirement Income Security Act

- Pension funds can invest in VC funds

The Golden Rule He who has the gold makes the rules.

While all this was going on…. 1969 – ARPANET inaugurated with four nodes

– UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, and UC Santa Barbara, University of Utah.

ARPANET to The Internet 1983 – TCP/IP running

on Unix BSD 4.2 Debut’s on Arpanet.

1985 – Arpanet officially renamed “The Internet’

1986 - Internet Engineering Task Force

1990 – “hypertext” introduced by Tim Berners-Lee CERN

Needs killer applications….

Killer Applications for the Internet Browser – HTTP and Hypertext – in1993 Early

version of Mosaic – NCSA University of Illinois Urbana Champaign

Web Servers with Content – in 1993 only 50 WWW servers known to exist.

Search Engine – in 1990 search engine Archie exists but not much to search.

Email – Most popular application on the Internet

Yet again… the valley is on fire

1994 – Netscape NavigatorInternet Information Server

1995 – Search Engine 1996 – Free Email

1995 – Portal, Email & Search Engine

1997/8 – Search Engine

Investment Venture Capital – 2015

Ref: EY Global VC Trends 2015

What sustains Silicon Valley? Availability, concentration, and fluidity of risk capital.

Business friendly regulatory environment.

Availability of skilled and innovative workers.

Universities, research & development institutions.

Intellectual property rights.

The legend, the dream, the belief that …. Yes You Can!

Questions?

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