So after Fred’s post caused a little bit of a stir in the blogosphere by downplaying some of the advantages for startups being in Silicon Valley, and being from a Berlin-based startup that’s out exploring the Silicon Valley vibe this month it set me to wondering — just where have most of the “great” software companies been started?
Forbes has a list of the 2000 largest public companies, so I went through and picked out the top 20 and noted their locations. Here’s the list:
- IBM, New York
- Microsoft, Washington
- Oracle, California
- Google, California
- Softbank, Japan
- SAP, Germany
- Accenture, Bermuda
- Computer Sciences Corporation, Virginia
- Yahoo, California
- Capgemini, France
- Computer Associates, New York
- Tata Consultancy Services, India
- Infosys Technologies, India
- Fiserv, Wisconson
- Wipro, India
- Symantec, California
- Adobe Systems, California
- Affiliated Computer Services, Texas
- Activision Blizzard, California (non-Valley)
- Intuit, California
Notably, 7 are based in California (all but one in the Bay Area). On the one hand, it certainly is far and away ahead of any other location (Bangalore, interestingly, being its closest competitor); on the other it shows a wider distribution of companies than one might assume. I’ll leave further conclusions as an exercise for the reader.
Update:
I realized after publishing this that I’d used the 2007 numbers rather than those from 2009. The number of companies in Silicon Valley remained the same.
2007 Numbers:
- IBM, New York
- Microsoft, Washington
- Oracle, California
- Google, California
- SAP, Germany
- First Data, Colorado
- Electronic Data Systems, Texas
- Softbank, Japan
- Yahoo, California
- Symantec, California
- Computer Sciences Corporation, Virginia
- Capgemini, France
- Tata Consultancy Services, India
- Fiserv, Wisconson
- Adobe Systems, California
- Infosys Technologies, India
- Computer Associates, New York
- Wipro, India
- Affiliated Computer Services, Texas
- VeriSign, California