- David Senra Wolfe’s Esquire essay on Noyce and the birth of Silicon Valley, published in December 1983; no standalone book edition exists. source ↗
Tom Wolfe's celebrated 1983 Esquire essay on Robert Noyce, the co-inventor of the integrated circuit and co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel — the man Wolfe calls the foremost figure in the technological revolution that created Silicon Valley. Wolfe traces Noyce's path from a childhood in rural Iowa through the founding of Intel, capturing the combination of scientific brilliance, profound self-confidence, and anti-hierarchical management that made him the model for everything Steve Jobs and his generation wanted to become.
David Senra devoted Founders episode #356 to Wolfe's essay, calling Noyce the figure who "provided the model and inspiration for everything we wanted to become." Jobs said of Noyce: "He was one of the giants in this valley. He was the ultimate inventor. The ultimate rebel. The ultimate entrepreneur." Senra pulled the defining trait: "Bob Noyce had a passion for the scientific grind" and "a profound and baffling self-confidence." At Intel, Noyce created a culture where "every employee should feel that he could go as far and as fast in this industry as his talent would take him." Wolfe captured the feeling: "This wasn't a corporation. It was a congregation." The founder lesson: build a culture so strong that people describe it in religious terms.