Sand Hill Road, often shortened to just "Sand Hill" or "SHR", is an arterial road in western Silicon Valley, California, running through Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Woodside, notable for its concentration of venture capital firms. 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.
Stanford Research Park (SRP) is a technology park established in 1951 as a joint initiative between Stanford University and the City of Palo Alto. It was the world's first university research park. It has more than 150 companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Tesla Motors, TIBCO and VMware; previous high-profile tenants include Steve Jobs's NeXT Computer, Xerox PARC, and Facebook. It has been called "an engine for Silicon Valley" and "the epicenter of Silicon Valley".
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP is a white-shoe law firm headquartered in New York City. The firm specializes in litigation and corporate practices, particularly mergers and acquisitions and private equity, with over 1,000 attorneys in 11 offices worldwide.
A boutique law firm is a law firm specializing in a niche area of law practice. While a general practice law firm includes a variety of unrelated practice areas within a single firm, a boutique firm specializes in one or a select few practice areas. There may be some confusion as legal publications may refer to any small- or mid-sized firm as a boutique, though generally firms with fewer than 100 attorneys would count. Boutique should apply to those firms that focus on particular areas, regardless of size, though they are typically smaller, with exception to a few firms such as Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner or Fish & Richardson with over 400 attorneys.
Peter N. Detkin was a managing partner and 20% owner of Intellectual Ventures. He is currently the Managing Director of the Sherpa Technology Group.
Baker Botts L.L.P. is an American law firm with approximately 725 lawyers. Headquartered in One Shell Plaza in Downtown Houston, Texas, the firm has energy and technology related clients. It is the second-oldest law firm west of the Mississippi.
Ann O'Neil Baskins is former General Counsel for Hewlett-Packard Company (HP). Baskins was linked to the HP pretexting scandal. On September 28, 2006, following public disclosure of the matter, Baskins resigned effective immediately, hours before she was to appear as a witness before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce at which she would later invoke the Fifth Amendment to "not be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime." Baskins was never charged by California or federal authorities.
Lowenstein Sandler is a New Jersey based American law firm with additional offices in New York, Palo Alto, New Jersey, Utah, and Washington, D.C. The firm has approximately 350 attorneys and has been described as "well connected" politically within New Jersey.
On September 5, 2006, Newsweek revealed that the general counsel of Hewlett-Packard, at the behest of HP chairwoman Patricia Dunn, had contracted a team of independent security experts to investigate board members and several journalists in order to identify the source of an information leak. In turn, those security experts recruited private investigators who used a spying technique known as pretexting. The pretexting involved investigators impersonating HP board members and nine journalists in order to obtain their phone records. The information leaked related to HP's long-term strategy and was published as part of a CNET article in January 2006. HP hired public relations firm Sitrick and Company to manage their media relations during the crisis.
Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison LLP was a large law firm based in San Francisco, California, United States. In 2003, the firm was liquidated under Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, after it had lost a substantial amount of money in the dot-com bubble and merger talks with Morgan, Lewis & Bockius had fallen through.
William Burton Chandler III is a former judge in the U.S. state of Delaware. He served as a resident judge on the Delaware Superior Court and as a Vice Chancellor and then Chancellor on the Delaware Court of Chancery.
Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is an American venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional operating funds in London, India and China.
Richard "Rick" G. Frenkel was an in-house intellectual property counsel and director of intellectual property at Cisco Systems. He was once the anonymous author of the Patent Troll Tracker blog, focusing on the subject of "patent trolls" and "a must-read blog among top intellectual property litigators".
Larry Sonsini is an American lawyer specializing all aspects of corporate law. He is senior partner and founder of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, an international law firm in business and intellectual property law. In 2021, Sonsini was chosen to serve as chair of the board of trustees at Santa Clara University.
Christopher Michael Kelly is an American entrepreneur, attorney, and activist. From September 2005 to August 2009, he served as Chief Privacy Officer, first General Counsel, and Head of Global Public Policy at Facebook. As an early leader at Facebook, he helped shape it into one of the most successful businesses in history. In 2010, Kelly was a candidate in the Democratic primary for California Attorney General. Since his departure from Facebook and campaign for Attorney General, he has become an investor in films, restaurants, and technology start-ups. Kelly became a co-owner of the NBA's Sacramento Kings in May 2013.
Cooley LLP is an American international law firm, headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with offices worldwide. The firm's practice areas include corporate, litigation, intellectual property, fund formation, public markets, employment, life sciences, clean technology, real estate, financial services, retail, regulatory and energy.
Paul Jeffrey Watford is an American lawyer who served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 2012 to 2023. In 2016, The New York Times identified Watford as a potential Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice Antonin Scalia. Watford resigned his judgeship in 2023 and became a partner at the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.
Ken DeLeon is a Silicon Valley realtor, innovator, public speaker, philanthropist, and former attorney. He was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and now resides in Palo Alto, California.
Ann Crady Weiss is gan American entrepreneur, venture capitalist and advocate for workplace diversity and paid family leave. Weiss is on her second start-up, HatchBaby, with her co-founder and husband, Dave Weiss. She is a former Yahoo! executive who began her career as a corporate attorney for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.
Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian LLP is an international law firm headquartered in Silicon Valley in California. The firm focuses exclusively on business law and commercial matters for venture-backed and public technology and life science companies and venture capital investors, while performing no litigation work.
