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You've heard of the actor who collects vintage sports cars and the famous athlete who owns every Elvis Presley single ever recorded. But what about Silicon Valley's stars? Could the material treasures they accumulate be as quirky as the companies they run? UPSIDE decided to find out.
How about we take one of the tanks out for a ride? I ask Jacques Littlefield, general of Silicon Valley's only fleet of 141 military vehiclestanks, armoured personnel carriers, recovery vehicles and one Seud missile. Yes, one Seud missile. We're seeking shelter from the rain in the maintenance shed on Littlefield's 470-acre Portola Valley, Calif., ranch. The barn-size "shed" is crammed with a potpourri of military relicsGerman, Russian, British and US- in varying states of rehabilitation.
Littlefield doesn't even pause to consider my request and flashes me a you-must-be-kidding look. "I never take my tanks out in the rain," he says. I glance at the monstrous machines, with gun turrets each the length of a Chevrolet Suburban, and sptter, "You don't take your tanks out in the rain?"
Littlefield's steely hazel eyes drill into me. "They might get dirty," he says. "Five minutes in the rain would cause four to six hours of cleanup."
So begins UPSIDE'S first -ever- tour of the treasures- the offbeat, the rare and the kitsch- of Silicon Valley's great collectors. To our knowledge, no one has ever tried to chronicle what it is that geeks compulsively hoard. The same guys who learned engineering fundamentals as children by fiddling with Erector sets and toy trains now apply that ovsessive drive to tracking down and atomic-bomb casing, restoring a lithograph of post-gold rush San Francisco, locating a dusty tome of Copernicus' celestial obsercations or hunting for an Indian wars medal lke the one awarded to Gen. George A. Custer.
All the collections are unabashed self-indulgences, and most have little to do with inventing the next freat technology. In this valley of the IPO driven, collecting is-in some ways- a gauge of one's mental health.
"You have to do something to get your mind away from business," says legendary VC Reid Dennis, founding partner of the venerable Institutional Benture Partners (IVP). Adds Marshall COx, founder of the angel investment group Saratoga Boys Club in...