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The Entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley  By  cover art

The Entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley

By: John McLaughlin,The Great Courses
Narrated by: John McLaughlin
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About the Creator and Performer

John McLaughlin is the president of the Silicon Valley Historical Association. An experienced entrepreneur and author of several books on Silicon Valley, he is the producer and director of Silicon Valley: A 100 Year Renaissance, a 1998 PBS documentary narrated by Walter Cronkite. He is also the producer of the 2012 documentary, Silicon Valley: A Five Part Series, narrated by Leonard Nimoy. Both documentaries feature interviews with more than 60 world-impacting individuals, including Bill Hewlett, Scott Cook, and Steve Jobs.

What listeners say about The Entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

At least the interviews were good.

I am not sure how much I should trust a course on Silicon Valley that has the narrator calling Allan Alcorn by the name Al Acorn or that cannot pronounce Mike Markkula’s name.

This course is riddled with factual errors, such as Apple having hired Steve and Woz as consultants prior to buying Next from Steve. First off Steve came with Next and Woz never left, he has been on payroll since day one. The entire course reads like a game of telephone.

The only redeeming part of this course was the inclusion of snippets of archival interviews. However, they were too few and too far between.

I have come to expect more from The Great Courses.

6 people found this helpful

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Inspiring! Superbly Researched and Presented

This program offers unique insights into the coincidental connections between Santa Clara Valley’s lost pastoral setting of fruit trees and the world’s technological powerhouse of Silicon Valley.

A wonderful storyteller, it would be hard to finish this story without feeling a personal connection to the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs that have changed the world. Through difficult times, these entrepreneurial heroes kept trying.

We meet Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the founders of Oracle, Adobe, Netscape, Intuit and many other world-changing high-tech companies. They often tell their own stories in this program. Success never came easy but the key was often timing, opportunity and perseverance.

No single person made Silicon Valley, but there were plenty of personalities, world events and lucky breaks that contributed. The Valley’s culture supports risk and forgives failure. You’ll learn that without role models, the Valley never would have become the technological powerhouse that it is today.

2 people found this helpful

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  • ZA
  • 05-24-23

Short and sweet

Very nice review of sv history
Begins slow but get more interesting at chapter 3

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Invaluable for all us geeks

I've quite enjoyed this. They call it a course, it feels more like a docu to me, but whatever, same difference. It was good. Lots of information and testimonials in a relatively short production.
Of course nerds like me had already heard some of these stories and anecdotes, but there is always room to learn and grow - a very SV idea there - and there are definitely people I didn't realize were part of this environment, and POVs we as a while mught not have considered.
Plus, this includes some pretty amazing soundbites from SV's greats, so it's worth listening for that alone.

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Excellent insight into the legacy of innovation

Excellent insight into the legacy of innovation in Silicon Valley. Great snippets from Steve Jobs and other tech leaders

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Is good

A good short history on Silicon Valley’s achievements. A nice short read for learning about Silicon Valley.

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History of Silicon Valley

I got a kick out of this short history of Silicon Valley. I especially love the recorded interviews of several people from the '90s including Steve Jobs. I learned quite a bit about how Silicon Valley was started through Stanford University which is something that I did not know before. if you're interested in the history of Silicon Valley this is a good introduction and gives you a few kernels of information that you can dig deeper into if you wish.

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Great story with a weak narrator

This is a very interesting recount of the history of Silicon Valley and the impact it has had on the world as we know it today. Building from the background of Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University in the 19th century thru many of the great startups that are household names today, the story is compelling and an easy follow. My only negative feedback is that the narrator was not as good as one would expect for such a compelling story. It doesn't detract from the story as much as it did not flow as well as it could have.

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Great education in history especially from an entrepreneurial respective

I enjoyed this audiobook Kenneth tied together the Silicon Valley phenomenon.
I will continue to listen to more books on my way to work and back.

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Terrible narrator

good content but terrible narrator. His voice totally ruins the content and made me distract all the way. Stop asking someone who doesn't have enough VO2 to read. I am consistently afraid he's passing after reading a whole chapter.