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connections with industry, he built the Stanford Industrial Perkins. When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple,
Park, which became the original networking hub for some of the senior talent from the semiconductor industry moved into
the brightest minds of technology, merging academia and the top management of the company. Even in recent times, like
industry, with the goal of advancing tech knowledge. machine learning, multi-core architecture or robotics took
Unconventional has become the norm at Stanford. roots, people in the valley have already moved into new
Professors, lecturers, and researchers are encouraged to technology. These founders have thought boldly and
collaborate extensively with industry. Many of them join back innovatively about different services and products to monetize
after successful stints in the industry and end up being them. Many new business models around SAAS (software as
mentors and investors to start-ups that emerge out of the a service), network effects and freemium (give the basic
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professors can run and establish companies while meeting emerged from the anti-fragile thinking in the valley. For any
their academic requirements. Many times, lead students or start-up in Silicon Valley, the test starts with building a
researchers working with professors join forces to start the minimum viable product - a product with the least amount of
company. Stanford has a strong IP license policy where the resources in the shortest possible time to test and iterate in
research coming out of the university can be taken private by WKH PDUNHW $V 5HLG +RIIPDQ FR IRXQGHU RI /LQNHG,Q SXWV LW
paying a fee. Patenting licensing technology coming out of ‘It is like throwing yourself off a cliff and assembling a plane on
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to the birth of the biotech industry. Stanford University labs around. But you keep going. The key point is to learn from your
gave birth to the likes of Google and VMware (and Stanford failures. Try, learn, and try again. The anti-fragile thinking in the
still holds stakes in these listed organizations). valley comes from accepting that not all ideas will succeed but
Another important highlight of the Silicon Valley model is the ones that do will compensate for all failures.
the continuous wave of entrepreneurs who have evolved with
technology. From semiconductors to microchips to personal
computers to smartphones to cloud to AI. The roots can be Amit Sridharan is the Director of US
traced to eight Shockley employees who helped build Fairchild Venture Investments & Partnerships for
Semiconductor leading to the birth of the semiconductor Mahindra Partners and is based out of
industry. Later in the decade, many of them left Fairchild and Silicon Valley. He has over 15 years of
founded their own companies including Gordon Moore and experience as an early stage investor
Robert Noyce, who in 1968 founded their own company in and incubator of new businesses both in
Santa Clara called Intel. Soon after, other ex-Fairchild Indian and the USA.
employees helped found AMD, Nvidia, and venture fund Kleiner

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