Sand Hill Road

English

Etymology

The road and its name existed in the 1920s[1] and possibly before. The road was evidently named as a route toward a place called Sand Hill, but the Sand Hill in Oakley is not the referent, as it lies in a distant part of the Bay Area. The neighborhood sense and the venture-capital industry sense are by metonymy and are many decades newer.

Proper noun

Sand Hill Road

  1. An arterial road in western Silicon Valley, California, running through Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Woodside, notable for its concentration of venture capital firms' offices.
    Synonyms: Sand Hill, SHR
    Holonym: Silicon Valley
  2. A neighborhood of Palo Alto, California, named after the road.
    Synonyms: Sand Hill, SHR
    Holonym: Silicon Valley
    • 2001 August 25, John Naughton, “There is a message in the dust on Sand Hill Road”, in The Observer‎[2]:
      There was a time when funding for internet start-ups was so easy that what came to matter was not how much you could get but where it came from. And if you got it from Sand Hill Road, Wall Street regarded that much as Catholics regard a benediction from the Pope.
    • 2003 December 29, John Markoff, “The Year Ahead: Consolidation and Competition as an Industry Grows Up”, in The New York Times‎[3], →ISSN:
      Yet there is little visible gloom along Sand Hill Road, a suburban business neighborhood where office real estate is among the most expensive in the world.
  3. (metonymic) The Californian venture capital industry, including its influence on Big Tech and biotech.
    Synonyms: Sand Hill, SHR
    Coordinate term: Wall Street
    Near-synonym: Silicon Valley
    • 2016 October 3, Tad Friend, quoting Bryce Roberts, “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny”, in The New Yorker‎[4]:
      Bryce Roberts said, “It has to be a way of disrupting Sand Hill Road”—where a number of the Valley’s top venture firms reside.
    • 2019 July 30, Julia Carrie Wong, “Young, Ivy League and data-driven: why venture capitalists love Pete Buttigieg”, in The Guardian‎[5]:
      Such numbers aren’t everything to a candidate running for the president of the entire country and not just Sand Hill Road, especially at a point in the campaign when many donors are hedging their bets by backing multiple candidates.

References

  1. ^ “Annual Report of the President of Stanford University: For the Thirty-Fourth Academic Year, Ending August 31, 1925”, in Stanford University Bulletin‎[1], volume 5, number 3, Stanford University, 1926, page 59:
    In order to protect its present holdings against the encroachment of auto camps and other enterprises which would adversely affect the value of its lands, the University [Stanford University] has completed the purchase of a 10-acre tract bordering on the westerly bank of San Francisquito Creek, and running from the old wooden bridge to Cedro Cottage, at a cost of $12,069.20. It also has purchased approximately 125 acres of beautiful rolling lands adjoining Searsville Lake, on the west and north, and lying between the Lake and the Sand Hill road, at a cost of $112,782, and has contracted to purchase an additional 1.42-acre tract, with improvements, in this same area, at a price of $9,427.

Further reading

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