The Valley

Since the 1980s, "Silicon Valley" has been the site of what its premier venture capitalist John Doerr calls "the largest legal creation of wealth in the history of the planet", as firms there rode two successive waves of innovation - the first spawned by the personal computer, the second by the Internet - and grew to more than $450 billion in market value and in revenues. The story of these companies and the complex and flagrantly colourful men behind them is one of pioneers, entrepreneurial warriors and technical wizards such as Bill Gates of Microsoft, Andy Grove of Intel, Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems and Jim Clark of Netscape.