05
Addresses
The places where it happened and the databases that kept score — Sand Hill Road, Station F, Silicon Roundabout, Crunchbase, PitchBook.
5 entries in this section
- 01The Two Miles That Priced Half the InternetSand Hill Road runs for roughly two miles through Menlo Park, California, and at its peak held more venture capital per square foot than any other address in the world. The piece names the firms, the buildings and the moves — who arrived when, which partnerships split, which addresses changed hands.
- 02Europe's Largest Startup Campus, in a Former Rail Freight DepotStation F opened in Paris in June 2017 in a 34,000-square-metre Halle Freyssinet that had been a rail freight terminal; Xavier Niel led the renovation. The piece documents the building, the resident programmes and the French government's Tech.gouv endorsement.
- 03Old Street, 2010: A Roundabout Becomes a PolicyDavid Cameron announced the 'Tech City' initiative at the Old Street roundabout in November 2010, turning an existing cluster of small technology companies into a named government project. The piece documents the announcement, the East London Tech City Investment Organisation that followed, and what Crunchbase records for the area.
- 04Where the Prototypes Actually Get MadeShenzhen's Huaqiangbei district became the world's primary source of consumer electronics components and rapid hardware prototyping — the supply chain infrastructure that made the hardware startup wave of the 2010s possible. The piece documents the district, the manufacturers that are named in public filings, and the shift in Western founder trips from Silicon Valley to Shenzhen.
- 05The Databases That Keep the ScoreCrunchbase (founded 2007, spun out of TechCrunch), PitchBook (2007, acquired by Morningstar 2016) and CB Insights (2008) are the three primary sources for the round sizes, valuations and company counts that appear throughout startup reporting. The piece documents each database's founding, methodology and the known gaps in their coverage.