The Big Score

The only contemporary history of the birth of Silicon Valley—from the reporter who had a ringside seat to it all

Over the past five decades, the tech industry has grown into one of the most important sectors of the global economy, and Silicon Valley—replete with sprawling office parks, sky-high rents, and countless self-made millionaires—is home to many of its key players. But the origins of Silicon Valley and the tech sector are much humbler. At a time when tech companies’ influence continues to grow, The Big Score chronicles how they began.

One of the first reporters on the tech industry beat at the San Jose Mercury-News, Michael S. Malone recounts the feverish efforts of young technologists and entrepreneurs to build something that would change the world—and score them a big payday. Starting with the birth of Hewlett-Packard in the 1930s, Malone illustrates how decades of technological innovation laid the foundation for the meteoric rise of the Valley in the 1970s. Drawing on exclusive, unvarnished interviews, Malone punctuates this history with incisive profiles of tech’s early luminaries—including Nobelist William Shockley and Apple’s Steve Jobs—when they were struggling entrepreneurs working 18-hour days in their garages. And he plunges us into the darker side of the Valley, where espionage, drugs, hellish working conditions, and shocking betrayals shaped the paths for winners and losers in a booming industry.

A decades-long story with individual sacrifice, ingenuity, and big money at its core, The Big Score recounts the history of today's dominant sector through its upstart beginnings.