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LIKE HOLLYWOOD, SAND\u00a0Hill Road is a metonym for an industry based on dreams:\u00a0VCs\u00a0gathered in low-slung office buildings funding startups that aim to change the world (sometimes they even succeed). Like Chernobyl, though, it\u2019s also a proxy for some cataclysmic flameouts. Here\u2019s how a sleepy 5.6-mile stretch of roadway in Menlo Park, California, became a genuine rock star.<\/p>\n
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Grant Heidrich:<\/strong>\u00a0I visited Stanford University in high school with [Stanford\u2019s former head of real estate] Tom Ford, in 1969. We\u2019re bumping along a dirt road\u2014Highway 280 was not even complete at the time\u2014and Tom points up to this hill covered with briars and weeds and says, \u201cI have a vision. This will become one of the most sought-after places to work, because it\u2019s right between San Jose and San Francisco and has access to Stanford.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Brook Byers:<\/strong>\u00a0The venture capital industry would never have existed without great entrepreneurs to back, which is why it was important that the semiconductor and computer industry was within a 15-mile radius of Sand Hill Road.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Heidrich:<\/strong>\u00a0Tom Ford knew who all the venture capitalists were.<\/p>\n Byers:<\/strong>\u00a0He also put in a restaurant called the Sundeck at 3000 Sand Hill, which became kind of a hangout for entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Heidrich:<\/strong>\u00a0If I got a deal, I could walk down the hall and go to Brook Byers and say, \u201cHey, Brook, take a look at this deal.\u201d Or vice versa, \u2019cause in those early days there wasn\u2019t enough capital in any one fund to fund a startup. You had to collaborate.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ben Horowitz:<\/strong>\u00a0In the \u201970s and \u201980s venture capital started off as a relatively boutique thing, with people like\u00a0Tom Perkins and Gene Kleiner\u00a0who had built really significant companies like\u00a0Fairchild Semiconductor\u00a0and\u00a0Hewlett-Packard.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Heidrich:<\/strong>\u00a0Then, with the internet economy in the \u201990s, people saw how quickly some of these companies could grow\u2014how it didn\u2019t take vast amounts of money to get entrepreneurs started.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Byers:<\/strong>\u00a0That\u2019s when you started seeing cover stories on venture capitalists in Fortune or Forbes or Businessweek\u2014and WIRED. WIRED sprung up in the \u201990s, right? [It did, in 1993. \u2014Editor]<\/p>\n Isaac Stein:<\/strong>\u00a0There was an annual Sand Hill Derby Challenge that went on for about five years. As you might guess, it turned into a high tech contest with Olympic bobsled athletes helping get the soapbox derbies started.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Theresia Gouw:<\/strong>\u00a0It was definitely an exciting time. I remember being in a Stanford computer lab with two classmates and downloading the first Mosaic web browser. Two of us are now venture capitalists.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Vivek Wadhwa:<\/strong>\u00a0I was an entrepreneur then, and those guys who worked on Sand Hill Road were arrogant as hell. It was an alpha male culture. You know, \u201cBow down to us, we know more than anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n