Stanford University

Founded 1885. Silicon Valley's engine, incubator of Google, Yahoo, and Hewlett-Packard.

Overview

Leland and Jane Stanford founded the university in memory of their son, willing it an 8,000 acre farm that became the valley's anchor. Frederick Terman's postwar engineering push kept graduates close to industry, and Stanford's office park drew Hewlett-Packard and later lockers full of startup legends. Google was born from a Stanford dissertation project, as were Yahoo, Cisco DNA, and Instagram's founding team's training ground. The Hoover Institution and SLAC accelerator add policy and physics firepower. With palm-lined malls and a Mediterranean climate, Stanford pairs beauty with leverage.