San Francisco, located in Northern California, is known for both its natural and man-made beauty. The city is notoriously hilly, with year-round fog; and aside from the famous Golden Gate Bridge, it also sports vast expanses of cable cars and colorful Victorian homes. San Fran, as it is more colloquially known, played an instrumental part in the California Gold Rush of the mid-1800's, in which prospectors from around the country travelled to the state hoping to strike gold and become rich. Samuel Brannan, a local newspaper publisher, famously strode up and down the streets of the city in 1848, holding up a vial full of gold, and proclaiming, "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!" The gold rush turned San Fran into the main banking and finance center on the United States' west coast, and is even referred to as Wall Street of the West. Now the city is known less for gold and more for silicon-more specifically, the explosion of the technological industry in the San Francisco's Silicon Valley.
Silicon Valley, located in San Fran's Bay Area, is known nationwide as the country's most prestigious tech hub, with STEM students in universities across the country and the world aspiring to make their mark there. Thirty-six tech companies listed in the Fortune 1000 are headquartered in the Bay Area, including Google
However, the tech boom in Silicon Valley has come with unforeseen consequences, first and foremost among which is gentrification. The area has historically been home to Mexican and Central American immigrants, who tend to live in large families in the Bay Area's narrow Victorian houses. However, as the Valley becomes more and more prosperous, property has become more and more expensive, forcing out many native inhabitants. The result is that although the tech boom is inarguably a source of pride for San Francisco-and the nation-it has nevertheless stirred up a lot of bad feeling on the ground, with tensions falling largely along race, class, and educational lines.
Silicon Valley came into being due to a number of intersecting factors: a skilled STEM research base to draw on from the area's prestigious universities (most notably Stanford University), abundant venture capital, and steady spending from the U.S. Department of Defense. The tech boom currently in process has its roots in the radio, telegraph, military and commercial technology-but by the 1970's, there were already numerous computer firms, semiconductor companies, and programing and service companies stationed in the area. Housing was cheap, and there were plenty of open industrial spaces. The venture capital industry on Sand Hill Road-beginning with Kleiner Perkins (now known as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, or KPCB) in 1972-fueled the ongoing growth, and the availability of venture capital exploded after Apple Computer had its successful $1.3 billion IPO in 1980.
