<p>GracieLegend,</p>
<p>I had read your words carefully before I posted. You stated that Stanford had nothing to do with the success of Silicon Valley and mistated that Google was started by multiple Stanford graduates. As many of the posters after me noted, there were many significant companies started out of Stanford. Notably:</p>
<p>HP, Sun, Yahoo, Google</p>
<p>If we accept your agument that Yahoo was nothing until Semel came to the company then you can take Yahoo off the list and put Netscape into the list because Jim Clark, Stanford professor, recruited all the UIUC programmers to come to the valley and start the company.</p>
<p>Regarding Hollywood, UCLA and USC have been driving forces in that industy. Similarly, here in the greater Boston area MIT has been a driving force in the founding of many local high tech companies.</p>