Sand Hill Road
 View of Sand Hill Road, with the Hoover Tower at Stanford University visible in the distance | |
| Location | Menlo Park, California Palo Alto, California Woodside, California |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 37°25′15″N 122°12′29″W / 37.42082°N 122.20808°W |
| West end | Portola Road in Woodside |
| Major junctions |  I-280 |
| East end |  SR 82 (El Camino Real) in Palo Alto |
| Other | |
| Known for | Silicon Valley Venture capitalism |
Sand Hill Road, often shortened to just "Sand Hill",[1] is an arterial road in western Silicon Valley, California, running through Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Woodside, notable for its concentration of venture capital companies.[2] The road has become a metonym for that industry; nearly every top Silicon Valley company has been the beneficiary of early funding from firms on Sand Hill Road.[3]
Its significance as a symbol of private equity and venture capitalism in the United States is compared to that of Wall Street and the stock market,[4] and K Street in Washington, D.C. and political lobbying, or Madison Avenue for the advertising industry.[3]
Location
Connecting El Camino Real and Interstate 280, the road provides easy access to Stanford University and the northwestern area of Silicon Valley. The road also runs southwest of Interstate 280 into a residential neighborhood of Woodside, California, but the private equity companies are concentrated to the east of the freeway on the main stretch of the road in Menlo Park. On its northeast end, it crosses into and runs briefly through Palo Alto before ending at El Camino Real.
Sand Hill Road is also home to the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
History
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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 opposition to widening only after seeing the results of the widening of the northern Palo Alto segment.[5]
Venture capitalism
The first venture capitalist to establish itself on Sand Hill Road was Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 1972. Since then, beneficiaries of funding from Sand Hill include Microsoft, Amazon.com, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Skype.[3]
For several years during the dot-com 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.[6]
In 1997, the Harvard Business School opened the California Research Center at 3000 Sand Hill Road, whose aim is to enable HBS faculty to write business cases about Silicon Valley.[7]
As of December 2014, Sand Hill Road is still the most expensive office space in the United States with annual rent reported at $111 per square foot, which was higher than Manhattan's Fifth Avenue at $102 per square foot.[3]
Venture capital firms
 | This section needs additional citations for verification. (April 2015) |
Some venture capital and private equity firms located on Sand Hill Road include:
- Astellas Venture Management – 2882 Sand Hill Road[8]
- Altos Ventures – 2882 Sand Hill Road[9]
- Khosla Ventures – 2128 Sand Hill Road[10]
- Canaan Partners – 2765 Sand Hill Road[11]
- Altimeter Capital – 2420 Sand Hill Road[12]
- GI Partners – 2180 Sand Hill Road[13]
- 5AM Ventures – 2200 Sand Hill Road[14]
- Lightspeed Venture Partners – 2200 Sand Hill Road[15]
- The Westly Group – 2200 Sand Hill Road[16]
- Nexus Venture Partners – 2200 Sand Hill Road[17]
- Greylock Partners – 2250 Sand Hill Road[18]
- Highland Capital Partners – 2420 Sand Hill Road, Suite 300[19]
- DCM Ventures – 2420 Sand Hill Road[20]
- Shasta Ventures – 2440 Sand Hill Road[19]
- Storm Ventures – 2440 Sand Hill Road[21]
- Mayfield Fund – 2484 Sand Hill Road[22]
- Onset Ventures – 2400 Sand Hill Road [23]
- GGV Capital – 2494 Sand Hill Road[24]
- The Blackstone Group – 2494 Sand Hill Road[25]
- Accel-KKR – 2180 Sand Hill Road
- Morgenthaler – 2710 Sand Hill Road
- InterWest Partners – 2710 Sand Hill Road[26]
- U.S. Venture Partners – 2735 Sand Hill Road
- Kleiner Perkins – 2750 Sand Hill Road[27]
- TriplePoint Capital – 2755 Sand Hill Road[28]
- Makena Capital Management – 2755 Sand Hill Road[29]
- Silver Lake Partners – 2775 Sand Hill Road
- Kohlberg Kravis Roberts – 2800 Sand Hill Road
- Sofinnova Ventures – 3000 Sand Hill Road
- New Enterprise Associates – 2855 Sand Hill Road
- Andreessen Horowitz – 2865 Sand Hill Road[30]
- Charles River Ventures – 2882 Sand Hill Road
- Draper Fisher Jurvetson – 2882 Sand Hill Road
- Battery Ventures – 2884 Sand Hill Road
- Sierra Ventures – 2884 Sand Hill Road[31]
- Institutional Venture Partners – 3000 Sand Hill Road[32]
- Mohr Davidow Ventures – 3000 Sand Hill Road
- Menlo Ventures – 2884 Sand Hill Road
- Storm Ventures- 3000 Sand Hill Road, Building 4, Suite 210
- Redpoint Ventures – 3000 Sand Hill Road
- Relay Ventures – 3000 Sand Hill Road[33]
- Sequoia Capital – 3000 Sand Hill Road
- Trinity Ventures – 3000 Sand Hill Road, Building 4, Suite 160
- Columbus Nova – 3000 Sand Hill Road, Building 3, Suite 190
- Bright Capital – 3000 Sand Hill Road, Building 2[34]
In popular culture
The season two premiere episode of the HBO television series Silicon Valley, in which the show's protagonists try to secure venture capital for their startup, was titled "Sand Hill Shuffle".
In the movie Birdemic: Shock and Terror, protagonist Rod meets with the fictional "Evergreen Capital" on Sand Hill Road in hopes of getting funding for his solar panel startup.
In the second episode of Chelsea Handler's Netflix documentary series Chelsea Does she takes a helicopter trip over Sand Hill Road as well as visits with Geoff Yang, a founding partner of Redpoint Ventures, to try and understand Silicon Valley better.
References
- ^ Murphy, Paul (March 10, 2015). "Sand Hill is the New Wall Street". Financial Times. Retrieved April 19, 2015.
- ^ Holson, Laura M. "Still Feeding An Internet Frenzy". The New York Times, June 6, 1999, sec. BU, p. 1.
- ^ a b c d "Venture Capital: Sand Hill Road Rules the Valley". Bloomberg News. December 4, 2014. Retrieved April 19, 2015.
- ^ Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel (2012). Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Prosperity. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 93–94. ISBN 978-1-137-27411-3. Retrieved April 19, 2015.
- ^ Neidorf, Shawn. "Menlo Park OKs Widening Sand Hill Road." San Jose Mercury News, November 13, 2002, sec. B, p. 1.
- ^ Ulfelder, Steve. "Welcome to the Hotel California No Vacancy: It's goodbye Santa Clara and hello Cincinnati for an increasing number of Internet start-ups that would rather not deal with the Valley's insane real estate costs and fickle workforce." Network World, September 25, 2000, p. 100. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2006-08-25. Retrieved 2006-04-21.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ "California Research Center". Harvard Business School. Retrieved March 21, 2017.
- ^ "Astellas Venture Management – Contact Us". astellasventure.com.
- ^ "Altos Ventures". altos.vc.
- ^ "Contact Us". khoslaventures.com.
- ^ "Home – Canaan". canaan.com.
- ^ "Altimeter Capital". altimetercapital.com.
- ^ GI Partners
- ^ "5AM Ventures – Actively Building Life Science Companies". 5amventures.com.
- ^ LightSpeed Venture partners – Contact us Archived 2011-03-11 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Westly Group – Contact Us Archived 2012-01-25 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Contact Us – Nexus Venture Partners Archived 2013-08-01 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "About Us". Greylock Partners.
- ^ a b "Shasta Ventures". shastaventures.com.
- ^ "Silicon Valley – Contact – DCM". dcm.com.
- ^ "Storm Ventures". stormventures.com. Archived from the original on 2013-10-29.
- ^ "Contact Us". mayfield.com.
- ^ "Contact Us to learn more about ONSET Ventures – ONSET Ventures". onset.com.
- ^ "Contact Us". ggvc.com.
- ^ Our Offices
- ^ "Contact Us". interwest.com.
- ^ "Dream Bigger". kpcb.com.
- ^ Robert Noakes. "TriplePoint Capital – Contact Us". triplepointcapital.com.
- ^ "Contact Us – Makena Capital Management". Makena Capital Management.
- ^ "Contact – Andreessen Horowitz". a16z.com. 2013-12-19.
- ^ "Sierra Ventures – Venture Capital".
- ^ "Contact". ivp.com.
- ^ "Contact Us – Relay Ventures". relayventures.com. Archived from the original on 2013-04-06.
- ^ Chernova, Yulia. "Redpoint Clean-Tech Partner Departs, Likely to Join Bright Capital." Dow Jones Venturewire, October 4, 2012.
External links
Media related to Sand Hill Road at Wikimedia Commons
San Mateo County, California, United States | ||
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