β
The funding of the Traitorous Eight and their company, Fairchild Semiconductor, was arguably the first such adventure to take place on the West Coast, and it changed the history of the region. After Fairchild got its $1.4 million in financing, it became evident that any team in the Valley possessed of grand ideas and stiff ambition could spin itself out, start itself up, and generally invent the organizational form that best suited its fancy. Engineers, inventors, hustlers, and artistic dreamers could meet, combine, separate, compete, and simultaneously collaborate, all courtesy of this new finance. Adventure capital could sometimes be defection capital, or it could be team-building capital, or almost just experimental capital.[1] But whichever way you looked at it, talent had been liberated. A revolution was afoot.
β
β
Sebastian Mallaby (The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future)