Striking It Rich: A new breed of risk takers is betting on the high-technology future

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Other pockets of entrepreneurial activity are found along the Boston beltways of routes 128 and 495, at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, and to the north and west of Dallas. Several former employees of Dallas-based Texas Instruments have set up their own companies specializing in communications, including Digital Switch Corp., Intecom and Danray. Gordon Matthews, 45, worked for IBM and Texas Instruments before starting companies of his own. His third and latest venture is ECS Telecommunications, which sells a computerized system that stores and transfers messages by telephone. Last year the three-year-old firm had sales of $4 million, and Matthews bullishly says they could double this year.

The most explosive area for growth companies today is south of San Francisco Bay in a 250-sq.-mi. area in Santa Clara County, where orchards of apricots, prunes and cherries were once a main source of income. Tiny semiconductors made with chips of silicon that were first manufactured there at the end of the '60s gave the region its nickname—"Silicon Valley." Growing up alongside the semiconductor companies in such towns as Sunnyvale, Los Altos and Cupertino are a host of new, high-tech industries. Says Michael Shields, a catalogue marketer in Palo Alto: "Living here is like riding in the nose cone of the space shuttle. We're riding into the future."

A range of other industries is also growing up in the region. Some say it should really be called the Siliclone Valley because of the 16 genetic-engineering companies now located there. Robert Swanson, an M.B.A. from M.I.T., and Biochemist Herbert Boyer, for example, started Genentech. Collagen Corp., a bio-medical products company in Palo Alto, makes a biological implant called Zyderm, which helps remove the effects of scars from the human skin. Companies like Coherent Radiation in Palo Alto are doing pioneering work in the industrial use of lasers.

There are now no fewer than 786 electronics firms in the fertile valley at the foot of the Diablo Range. In 1980 they produced $8.7 billion worth of goods. The American Alliance for Innovation now gives two-day seminars on marketing strategies and venture capital for hopeful entrepreneurs. Says William Hambrecht, a San Francisco investment banker whose firm, Hambrecht & Quist, helped launch Apple Computer and Genentech: "Being a successful entrepreneur here is one of the most privileged positions in today's world."

The mere presence of so many profitable businesses leads to the creation of still more companies. The entrepreneur has become the local cultural hero and role model, just as movie directors are in Los Angeles or oil drillers in Houston. Nearly everybody knows someone who left a company and started up his own.

David Steininger, 33, a graduate of Purdue University, is currently a project manager with Palo Alto's Electric Power Research Institute, an energy think tank. Says he: "I want to make my own mark and do something that has a lot more challenge. If you can't win a Nobel Prize, the next best thing is to start your own company." Steininger is thinking about forming a firm that will develop new oil-recovery technology.