Silicon Valley, located in Northern California just south of San Francisco, is known as the high-tech capitol of America. It is the hub for some of the world’s most successful technology corporations as well as thousands of small startups.
In an effort to figure out the motivating force behind the formation of these successful and often groundbreaking ventures, Professor Arnold Cooper took it upon himself to study the formation of essentially all of the first three generations of Silicon Valley entrepreneurial ventures. Cooper discovered an interesting correlation between the companies he studied. The founding entrepreneurs of these companies had figured out a way of improving their previous employers’ businesses but their employers weren’t interested and these ideas were not accepted.
The now-successful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs either pushed so hard that they were fired or quit in frustration and founded new ventures to do what they were trying to get their previous employers to do.