This is America. This is California, and
this is San Francisco. Just this. Here's the Golden Gate bridge, and over there is
the longer but less iconic bay bridge. Welcome to the city-county of San
Francisco. Wait which one is it city or county? It's both. A city is a
subdivision of County, which is a subdivision of a state, which is a
subdivision of the United States, and all levels have their own powers and
responsibilities. San Francisco is one body which has the
powers of both a city and county. San Francisco's often just called "The City"
and you'll find many high-tech companies there, but it is not Silicon Valley. This is. Silicon Valley is the nickname
given to the Santa Clara Valley, named for the silicon semiconductor transistors
that were manufactured in the region. Transistors are fundamental part of
modern electronics, and their invention in 1947 revolutionize the industry. One of the inventors, William Shockley
moved to the Santa Clara Valley in 1956 to start device manufacturer Shockley
Semiconductor. Despite having a perfect name for an electronics company, Shockley was not the best person to lead a team. He was notoriously difficult to work
with, and generally an all-around jerk. A group of frustrated employees, called the Traitorous Eight, left in 1957 to start Fairchild Semiconductor. Many of the
people involved would go on to found or invest in new technology companies in
the valley. For example two of the Traitorous Eight, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, went on to found Intel. Around the same time, Stanford University dean Frederick Terman encouraged alumni to
start companies and leased offices near the campus. Two graduates, William Hewlott and David Packard,
started HP. In following years, the reoccurring theme of people leaving big
companies to start little companies, which become the big companies, solidified the valley as a center for the computer industry and venture capital. So why do people mix up San Francisco
and Silicon Valley? It is because the city and the valley are both part of an
economically interdependent region known as the San Francisco Bay Area, composed of the nine counties that border the San Francisco Bay. The nine countries are in
decreasing order population, Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, San
Francisco, San Mateo, Sonoma, Solano, Marin, and Napa counties. Unlike San Francisco, these other
counties are composed of multiple cities. The largest county is Santa Clara and
covers most of the valley and it contains the largest city in the Bay Area, San Jose,
where you'll find ebay headquarters. Other notable cities in the region are
Sunnyvale, the home of yahoo, the city of Santa Clara, with intel, Mountain View has
the googleplex, and HP headquarters are in Palo Alto. You'll find Apple little
more inland in Cupertino. Right on the border of san mateo me you'll find Stanford, prime
recruitment ground for the industry. While geographically not part of the
(Santa Clara) valley, San Mateo still has many headquarters, such as Facebook right by
the border with Santa Clara in Menlo Park, and if you head up the peninsula, you'll find YouTube's physical location in San Bruno, right by the airport. Moving on to the city itself, you would
be forgiven for confusing it with Silicon Valley, given how many tech companies are in a
small area, sometimes even in adjacent buildings. If you took an uber from
Uber to Twitter, you'll be there before you're done
tweeting about it. Along with Uber, many of the newer, highly valuable startups worth over a billion dollars,
called unicorns, are in the city, such as AirBnB and Pinterest, also neighbors.
Following the trend, you will find yelp and reddit HQs just
across the street from each other. Taking a trip across the Golden Gate
Bridge, we come to the North Bay. The four counties, Marin, Sonoma, Napa, and Solano, are the least populated, but also the richest in the region. Marin County is home to Lucas Films, and
Sonoma and Napa counties are wine country. And finally we move on to the East Bay,
composed of Alameda and Contra Costa counties. The largest city in the area is
Oakland, which is a good place to live if you are poor and only make $100K/year. What the East Bay lacks in tech companies, it makes up for with food companies, which is a reminder that the Bay Area is
next to one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world, the California Central Valley, where if
you're American is the origin of most of fruits and vegetables you eat.
The East Bay is not completely left out though, in Berkeley you'll find The
Spiritual Home of Numberphile, and another university that scouts love. So are you wrong for calling Twitter or
Uber a Silicon Valley company? Silicon Valley is more of a cultural term for
the industry than it is for describing geographical location. So the company's don't need to physically
be in Silicon Valley, in much the same way that wall street finance companies
don't actually need to be on Wall Street. However the reverse is not true, you
can't say Google, Facebook, or Apple are in San Francisco, unless people know
you're talking about the San Francisco Bay Area. If you like this video, check out this
similar video about the United Kingdom, Great Britain, and England by CGPGrey
on the left, or check out any of these other videos on the right. Thanks for watching!
