Silicon Valley lore often focuses on the founders of major companies who later went on to become household names worldwide. Think Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak at Apple Computer Inc., Larry Ellison at Oracle Corp., or Bill Hewlett and David Packard at Hewlett-Packard Co.

But many of the technology industry’s untold stories involve the people who were just as influential in launching these innovative powerhouse companies yet were not nearly as well-known. Audacious and persistent to a fault, they were trailblazers, but crucially they were also troublemakers.

Their stories have finally been documented thanks to Leslie Berlin (pictured), Silicon Valley archives and project historian at Stanford University, whose book — “Troublemakers: Silicon Valley’s Coming of Age” — hit store shelves today. Her research focuses on a set of individuals who came to the industry during the fertile growth period of the 1960s and 1970s, long before the internet, smartphones and social media.

“They set the tone for where we are today around the world in the modern, tech-infused life that we live,” Berlin said, taking the Valley well beyond chips into personal computers, video games, biotech, the internet and even venture capital.

Berlin visited theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s livestreaming studio, in Palo Alto, California, and spoke with host Jeff Frick. They discussed who really made Apple into a company, the woman entrepreneur who pioneered software in Silicon Valley and the man responsible for pushing the Valley well beyond silicon.

Software, not lingerie

The Stanford historian spent six years interviewing people such as Mike Markkula, no doubt the third most important person in Apple’s storied history. It was the Intel Corp. and Fairchild Semiconductor International Inc. veteran Markkula who wrote the company’s first business plan and provided much-needed funding. He also recruited the engineers who helped design the legendary first Apple computer.

“He pulled into Apple all of the chip people that he had worked with, and that is really what turned Apple into a company,” Berlin said.

Berlin tells a similar story of Atari Inc., founded by now-legendary entrepreneur Nolan Bushnell, who needed engineer Al Alcorn to design the pioneering video game “Pong” and other products to make Atari into the blockbuster business it became. “What’s not understood is how much they needed each other,” Berlin said. Great ideas, she added, are “just dreams, they’re not reality without these other people.”

There is also the story of Sandra Kurtzig, one of Silicon Valley’s first female entrepreneurs and the founder of ASK Computer Systems. She persuaded Hewlett-Packard to loan her a computer to write something at the time that was considered a mere novelty in the tech ecosystem: software. “Software was such an unknown concept,” she said. “People who heard she was selling software thought she was selling lingerie.”

Rebels with a cause

One of the truly remarkable stories of Silicon Valley involves Robert Taylor, chief scientist at Xerox PARC. It was in his computer science lab that the earliest design for what became the internet was created. His team also developed a prototype of the personal computer.

“These very sophisticated Ph.D. engineers were all working together under the guidance of Bob Taylor, a Texan with a drawl and a master’s degree in psychology,” Berlin said.

But Xerox was worried that the technology would lead to a paperless world that would wipe out the copier business, so it pulled the plug on the PC project. Before the work ended, Taylor invited an eager, young engineer to see what the lab had produced in 1979. His name was Steve Jobs.

Not least, Berlin talked about the reality that few of these pioneers had any idea of their eventual impact. “These guys just didn’t want to work for a boss they didn’t like and they wanted to build a transistor, and then 20 years later a large portion of U.S. economy rests on the decisions they’re making,” she said. “I think of them as rebels with a cause.”

Here’s the full CUBE Conversation:

Photo: SiliconANGLE