Fearless Genius: The Digital Revolution in Silicon Valley 1985-2000

by Doug Menuez

  The Other Amazon.

  Aspen, Colorado, 1995.

  At the annual Kleiner Perkins Aspen Summit, my wife, Tereza, who is Brazilian, noticed a man wearing a T-shirt that said AMAZON. We went over to chat and assumed the conversation would be about Brazil and the famous river. Next thing we knew, we were riding up Aspen Mountain in the enclosed chairlift with a friendly Jeff Bezos. He explained that he was just starting this new company called Amazon.com. He practiced his fund-raising pitch on us and asked what we thought. What could we say? It was both astounding and disturbing. Local bookstores would suffer, yet it was so cool and practical it was clearly unstoppable. Unlike the rest of his former Wall Street colleagues, Jeff surprisingly embraced a risky long-term mind-set and was determined to gain market share before being profitable. He was proved right, but today Amazon still stands almost alone in this philosophy among US businesses.

  President Clinton Is Really Smart.

  Mountain View, California, 1995.

  During his reelection campaign, President Bill Clinton attended a fund-raiser thrown by the top CEOs of Silicon Valley. John Doerr (center), interacting with Clinton, helped organize the visit at the home of Regis McKenna. During dinner, the CEOs peppered Clinton with questions related to complex technology, trade, and economic issues. Listening patiently, the president smoothly delivered a point-by-point response to each guest in turn, revealing a jaw-dropping breadth of knowledge about all the issues, even obscure aspects of encryption technology. Everyone pulled out his checkbook and donated generously to the campaign.

  High-Altitude Ambition.

  Aspen, Colorado, 1993.

  You could feel real excitement about the massing potential of new technologies to transform human life that came into focus in conversations and presentations at the annual Aspen Summit. Kleiner Perkins was hosting some of the smartest entrepreneurs, scientists, futurists, and financiers on the planet in a buzzy, electric forum, sort of like a mini–TED conference for the ultimate insiders. In this relaxed and creative exchange of ideas, people talked about the technology they were developing, hoping to develop, or needed to know about to remain competitive.

  “Maybe the revolution is the point, not the profit.”

  —Bill Joy, cofounder, Sun Microsystems, on the importance of long-term, patient investments required to solve big technology challenges such as climate change

  Bill Gates Says No One Should Ever Pay More Than $50 for a Photograph.

  Laguna Niguel, California, 1992.

  Microsoft CEO Bill Gates discusses cheap content for the masses and debates with reporters about the long-delayed vaporware upgrade to Windows at the Agenda ’92 Conference, hosted by the elegantly acerbic Stuart Alsop. Alsop showed Gates no mercy during an interview onstage, grilling him on why Windows was so late. Later that year, at the third influential TED conference, Gates was onstage making a presentation about digital content and the cost of photography, saying, “No one should ever pay more than fifty bucks for a photograph.” As Gates explained, he was completing construction of his high-tech house in Seattle, whose interiors would feature screens with continuously changing displays of images. Licensing images on the scale he envisioned would be expensive, so he began to think about how to own or control vast archives of images. This led to the idea of forming a stock photography business originally called Continuum, tasked with developing large image libraries for online distribution. Backstage at TED, Joan Rosenberg, a passionate defender of photographers and founder of the Center for Creative Imaging in Maine, was livid at Gate’s comments. She lunged at him with a piercing cry. Steve Arnold, recruited from Lucasfilm to run Continuum, stepped in front of Bill and restrained Joan in the nick of time. Joan knew that Bill’s pronouncement was the beginning of the end for the traditional ways photographers had always made a living. Indeed, Continuum’s first contract was excoriated in the photography trade press for its aggressive rights grab, precipitating a name change. Thus, Corbis was born.

  Getting with the Program.

  Seattle, Washington, 1989.

  Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s senior vice president of systems software (right), engages with a group of programmers at company headquarters in Redmond, Washington. In 1989, Ballmer was primarily working on OS/2, a new operating system being developed in partnership with IBM. A short time later, the partnership dissolved and Microsoft put all its focus on the Windows operating system, already generating huge profits. Ballmer is known for his explosive and quirky personality, and his tendency to shout. He could be wickedly funny, or downright terrifying, especially to Microsoft’s competitors. He rose to become CEO in 2000 and recently announced he was stepping down.

  A Dog of Autodesk.

  San Rafael, California, 1995.

  Led by CEO Carol Bartz, Autodesk was one of the first tech companies to allow, even encourage, employees to bring pets to work. Studies now show interacting with pets lowers heart rates and stress at home and at work, but then the trend was a manifestation of the cultural shifts that a new generation of engineers had brought to Silicon Valley. Autodesk pioneered 3-D computer-aided design (CAD) software used by architects and engineers in everything from construction and manufacturing to media and entertainment. But Bartz and the company suffered through a tough period during the dot-com bubble. Said Bartz, “I’d go to investor conferences—with standing room only at presentations by Used-Fucking-Golfballs.com—and I’d get four shareholders listening to me.” She persevered and by the early 2000s led the company to clearly dominate the computer-aided design software market.

  Exercise Break at Intel Fab 11X.

  Rio Rancho, New Mexico, 1998.

  Workers inside Intel’s largest chip-fabrication plant exercise and stretch as part of their break time. The plant is a giant, sterile clean room, so protective “bunny suits” must be worn throughout the facility to prevent contamination from skin and hair. These workers produce five chips a second, twenty-four hours a day. Many of them are from the nearby Pueblo tribe and maintain their traditions when not working with new technology. After work, many tend their corn and bean fields with their families before dinner. An industry powerhouse, Intel helped Microsoft Windows become the dominant operating system, and today their chips run most of the PCs in the world. The company was founded by industry legends Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce; Andy Grove was their first employee. Moore famously posited Moore’s law, and Noyce was the cocreator of the microchip that gave Silicon Valley its name and fueled its growth. Andy Grove become CEO and led Intel through a long period of tremendous growth. He became a mentor to Steve Jobs as Jobs began NeXT Computer. Although Jobs hated Microsoft Windows and was unhappy about Intel’s support of Microsoft, he acknowledged the Pentium chip as “the coolest thing out there” when introduced. Shortly after he regained power at Apple, he switched Apple computers to Intel chips.

  Evidence of Human Activity.

  Silicon Valley, California.

  In the maelstrom of Silicon Valley it was relatively rare to find a superneat work space. Typically, elaborate personal decorations appeared with stacks of documents, electronic components, or parts of prototype machines being developed. The mess reflected the pace of the work. A secret prototype of a tablet-size Newton, foreshadowing the iPad, at Apple Computer, Cupertino, California, 1993.

  Tchotchkes and family photos define personal territory around a desk at Sun Microsystems, Mountain View, California, 1992.

  An engineering workbench in the Apple factory in Singapore, 1994.

  Newton prototypes on a desk at Apple Computer, Cupertino, California, 1992.

  Difference of Opinion.

  San Mateo, California, 1990.

  During a break in a tense investment meeting, a manager aggressively makes his point during an “off-line” private dispute. Astonishing amounts of money were flowing into Silicon Valley, from retirement and pension funds, into investment funds like this one, stoking tempers and impairing judgment. Despite all the advances of the women�
�s movement, Silicon Valley was an overtly male-dominated environment. In those days, women had to fight tooth and nail for everything—and more often than not still do. While an increasing number of highly visible women have been taking leadership roles, at the engineering level things are much the same.

  Anxiety Is Sweeping the Room.

  Emeryville, California, 1991.

  During a party at Farallon Computing to celebrate the company’s expansion and move, employees discuss an upcoming deadline for a product demonstration at an industry trade show. Over the fifteen years that I documented the Valley, the competitive pressure to get new products to market faster was unrelenting and kept increasing every year. But getting to market became almost secondary to the prerelease marketing, the positioning and branding of upcoming new products. Resources were shifting from building products to building demos for more and more trade shows. The trade shows themselves became enormously profitable new enterprises built around the marketing of new technology.

  Winning Isn’t Everything, It’s the Only Thing.

  Berkeley, California, 1989.

  An employee at Farallon Computing ascending to the highest level. Founded by Reese Jones, a biophysicist, inventor, and investor, Farallon Computing brought out a low-cost Macintosh networking system via PhoneNet, which implemented AppleTalk over telephone lines. Jones has multiple telecommunications patents and is working on a personal project: long-range evolutionary forecasts for life-forms on planet Earth.

  Unknown Unknowns.

  Fremont, California, 1990.

  An engineer at Lam Research labors to solve an electrical connection problem in the assembly of a sophisticated plasma etching tool. The machine is used in the production of silicon integrated circuits.

  Soul of the Newest Machine.

  Zurich, Switzerland, 1997.

  Nanotech scientist Jean Fompeyrine of IBM’s Advanced Functional Materials Group making adjustments to the molecular beam epitaxy system with which atomically precise thin films of different materials can be grown.

  Time for the Future.

  Zurich, Switzerland, 1997.

  A traditional Swiss clock chimes out the passing hours in a lab at IBM’s Advanced Functional Materials Group.

  Right Place, Right Time, Right Skills.

  Mountain View, California, 1996.

  Marc Andreessen, doing a phone interview with the support of his publicist (seated at right), was exhausted and riding a monstrous wave of digital global change he helped precipitate. The press had been pleading for interviews with him ever since the Netscape Navigator browser was released, making internet access easy and fast for the masses. Andreessen cofounded Netscape with computer-graphics pioneer Jim Clark in 1994 with funding from Clark and from John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins. Andreessen was recruited by Clark after Andreessen cocreated the Mosaic browser while still a student at the University of Illinois. Their Netscape browser was an immediate hit and quickly gained 90 percent market share through 1995 and into 1996. They had lots of revenue from rapid growth, but had yet to realize profits when they offered their IPO in August 1995. In a milestone in Silicon Valley history, the IPO set records for first-day gains, improbably valuing their unprofitable dot-com at $2.9 billion. In 1996, Andreessen was photographed for the cover of Time magazine, barefoot and on a throne. The Netscape IPO flipped the conservative thinking about investing and incited the craze for dot-coms—even those without finished products, or profits. But Microsoft had already turned its Mordor-like gaze southward to Netscape, releasing its Internet Explorer browser for free and bundling it into its Windows ’95 operating system. By early 1997, Goliath had crushed David, clearly winning the browser war. Netscape kept at it, laying off employees in 1998 to cut costs. But its market share was falling as fast as it had risen, from dominance down to 1 percent in a few short years.

  Engineers at Beckman Instruments.

  Fullerton, California, 1989.

  Veteran engineers at Hewlett-Packard’s then biggest rival, Beckman Instruments, with their pocket protectors and slide rules, present a classic image of nerds. They represent the mathematic pioneers and heroes of World War II, the space-race technology, and a generation of giants who built Silicon Valley. The Steve Jobs generation of hippie-geeks that followed brought a relaxed, rebellious attitude along with new ideas to disrupt the status quo. They tossed the pocket protectors, ties, rules, and regulations, turning the naturally cautious engineering culture upside down. Today, the United States lacks enough trained engineers to fill the millions of engineering jobs sitting open in its technology industry. In 2012, about three million jobs in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math were unfilled since February 2011, according to the US Department of Labor. The problem persists today with lots of discussion but no easy solutions. The United States graduated fewer doctorates of computer science in 2012 than in 1970. When it comes to graduating computer science students at all levels, we just can’t compete with countries such as China, Russia, and India. During the Bush administration, changes to visa rules further reduced the pool of talent in the United States by requiring all foreign engineering students to return home upon graduation.

  The Inconvenience of Success.

  Santa Clara, California, 1992.

  With its fast, low-cost workstations Sun Microsystems reached a billion dollars in revenue faster than any other tech company. The massive success came with increasing competitive pressure, and the company grew to over fifteen thousand employees worldwide in a few short years, forcing whole divisions to quickly move to bigger offices.

  Turning the Ship Around.

  IBM facilities in New York State, 1997.

  The hands of an IBM research scientist studying virtual reality appear on a monitor, Armonk, New York, 1997.

  IBM scientist Daniel C. Edelstein with a colleague examining their prototype copper chip that was so advanced it would shock the industry. With interconnectors made of copper—a better conductor than aluminum, the previous industry standard—the new chip ensured the continued advance of microprocessor speed for years to come, East Fishkill, New York, 1997.

  An IBM researcher prepares a presentation, East Fishkill, New York, 1997.

  IBM CEO Louis Gerstner talking about the radical restructuring of IBM then underway, Armonk, New York, 1997.

  Bill Joy Is Worried about the Future of the Human Race.

  Aspen, Colorado, 1998.

  Legendary programmer and cofounder of Sun Microsystems Bill Joy wrote Berkeley Unix while a student at UC Berkeley and helped the US Defense Department with the TCP/IP stack code that allowed e-mail to travel along the path of least resistance in case of nuclear attack. He then cofounded Sun Microsystems, became a billionaire, husband, and father, and patron of the arts. He also championed and helped finish the code for Java, perhaps Sun Microsystems’ most important legacy. Bill now believes unfettered innovation for its own sake endangers the very existence of the human race. In 2000, Bill published a manifesto in Wired magazine that stunned the technology world by challenging the accepted wisdom of unrestrained development. Triggered in part by meeting noted scientist Ray Kurzweil and hearing his ideas about the Singularity, when computers gain consciousness and we will upload our brains into a hive mind, Bill began forming his thesis. He warned that without thoughtful controls the convergence of our most powerful twenty-first-century technologies—robotics, supercomputers, nanotechnology, and genetic engineering—might destroy the human race. For the last decade, Bill has been on a global hunt for scalable green technology solutions to climate change. He says he’s identified ten “Edisons” capable of significant breakthroughs if given proper funding. Unfortunately, he is finding it harder and harder to find investors willing to risk supporting these kinds of extremely challenging, long-term projects.

  Manneken Pis Waters the Battleground at Sun Microsystems.

  Santa Clara, California, 1995.

  On the roof of Sun Microsystems, the Jolly Roger waves and a copy o
f the impudent Belgian Manneken Pis statue endlessly urinates, while down below over a thousand employees are having an elaborate water fight. Staged across the corporate campus, it was led by their CEO, Scott McNealy, and senior management well equipped with water weapons. With its Unix-powered workstation, Sun was the fastest-growing technology company between 1985 and 1989.

  A Plan for Global Golf.

  Mountain View, California, 1991.

  This is not a strategic business chart in Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy’s office, but an elaborate map of the golf courses he intended to play around the world.

  United in Victory.

  Santa Clara, California, 1992.

  After a sloppy, hard-fought water battle between Sun employees from Sun Microsystems Laboratories and opposing forces from their SunSoft division, a seven-point treaty was negotiated and a draw declared. They went home soaking wet but as winners.

  “The best part of the story is, by noon Monday I had ten million dollars in the bank.”

  —Samir Arora, cofounder and CEO of internet start-up NetObjects, relating his comeback from the brink of failure due to his investors’ cutting off his company’s funding.