Sand Hill Road

The Sand Hill Road freeway exit.

Looking eastbound down Sand Hill towards Stanford. Most of the office complexes cannot be seen from the road.

Sand Hill Road is a road in Menlo Park, California, notable for its concentration of venture capital companies. Its significance as a symbol of private equity in the United States may be compared to that of Wall Street in the stock market.^{[citation needed]} Connecting El Camino Real and Interstate 280, the road provides easy access to Stanford University and Silicon Valley.

For several years during the dotcom boom of the late 1990s, commercial real estate on Sand Hill Road was more expensive than almost anywhere else in the world. The annual rent in the area around Sand Hill Road peaked at around $144 (USD) per square foot ($1550 per m²) in mid-2000; at the time, this was higher than rates in Manhattan and London's West End.

Sand Hill Road is also home to the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

Venture capital firms

Sand Hill Road venture capitalist firms currently invest in a variety of areas, in particular^{[citation needed]}:

• Biotechnology
• Clean technology
• Computer hardware
• Computer services
• Computer software
• Electronics
• Healthcare
• Internet companies
• Semiconductors
• Telecommunication

Some venture capital and private equity firms located on Sand Hill Road include:

• Azure Capital Partners - 2100 Sand Hill Road^{[citation needed]}
• GI Partners - 2180 Sand Hill Road^{[citation needed]}
• Lightspeed Venture Partners - 2200 Sand Hill Road
• The Westly Group - 2200 Sand Hill Road
• Greylock Partners - 2250 Sand Hill Road^{[citation needed]}
• Highland Capital Partners - 2420 Sand Hill Road, Suite 300^{[citation needed]}
• Shasta Ventures - 2440 Sand Hill Road^{[citation needed]}
• Storm Ventures - 2440 Sand Hill Road, Suite 301^{[citation needed]}
• Benchmark Capital - 2480 Sand Hill Road^{[citation needed]}
• The Blackstone Group - 2494 Sand Hill Road^{[citation needed]}
• Accel-KKR - 2500 Sand Hill Road^{[citation needed]}
• Morgenthaler - 2710 Sand Hill Road^{[citation needed]}
• U.S. Venture Partners - 2735 Sand Hill Road^{[citation needed]}
• Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers - 2750 Sand Hill Road^{[citation needed]}
• Silver Lake Partners - 2775 Sand Hill Road^{[citation needed]}
• Kohlberg Kravis Roberts - 2800 Sand Hill Road^{[citation needed]}
• Sofinnova Ventures - 2800 Sand Hill Road^{[citation needed]}
• New Enterprise Associates - 2855 Sand Hill Road^{[citation needed]}
• Andreessen Horowitz - 2875 Sand Hill Road^{[citation needed]}
• Charles River Ventures - 2882 Sand Hill Road^{[citation needed]}
• Draper Fisher Jurvetson - 2882 Sand Hill Road^{[citation needed]}
• Battery Ventures - 2884 Sand Hill Road^{[citation needed]}
• Mohr Davidow Ventures - 3000 Sand Hill Road^{[citation needed]}
• Redpoint Ventures - 3000 Sand Hill Road^{[citation needed]}
• Sequoia Capital - 3000 Sand Hill Road^{[citation needed]}
• Tenaya Capital - 3000 Sand Hill Road^{[citation needed]}
• Versant Ventures - 3000 Sand Hill Road^{[citation needed]}

History

For many years, Sand Hill Road's northern end terminated in the middle of Stanford Shopping Center's parking lot, and the only four-lane segment was the section from Interstate 280 to Santa Cruz Avenue (the section where all the venture capitalists are housed). This situation resulted in two severe bottlenecks which made it difficult to travel to and from Stanford Shopping Center, Stanford University, and Menlo Park.^{[citation needed]}

Extension and widening of the road was fiercely opposed by environmentalists, who were concerned about the road's proximity to San Francisquito Creek, and by residents of Menlo Park, who feared that completion of the road would increase traffic congestion in their area due to the mid-Peninsula region's lack of a direct north-south arterial. After three decades of lobbying, negotiation, and litigation, the road was finally completed to El Camino Real in 2001. Only the existing portion from just north of Alameda de las Pulgas to just south of Stanford Shopping Center was widened to four lanes; the new extension past the shopping center was built only as two lanes.^{[citation needed]}

The bottleneck near Santa Cruz Avenue was widened in 2006 and features a 16-foot (4.9 m) high faux rock wall at the junction of Sand Hill Road and Santa Cruz Avenue. The project was delayed because the stretch of land at issue runs through Menlo Park, not Palo Alto; the city reversed its stubborn opposition to widening only after it saw how well the widening of the northern Palo Alto segment turned out.