Gallery: The 10 Silicon Valley Companies You Wish You Worked for (or Started)
01arista-networks
The history of Silicon Valley is the history of digital technology. To become a part of that history, do you go to work for one of the giants — Apple, Google, Intel, HP, Oracle, Facebook? Or do you catch a wave that hasn't crested yet? Longtime Silicon Valley venture capitalist turned Stanford faculty member and entrepreneur [Andy Rachleff](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/business/2012/10/youre-young-youre-rich-now-what-10-questions-with-wealthfront-ceo-andy-rachleff/) tells his students the best thing they can do is join a mid-size company that has proven its durability but is still growing rapidly. In a recent [blog post](https://blog.wealthfront.com/hot-mid-size-silicon-valley-companies/) on the website of his software-driven money management service [Wealthfront](https://www.wealthfront.com/), he writes: > You get more credit than you deserve for being part of a successful company, and less credit than you deserve for being part of an unsuccessful company. Success will help propel your career. At a fast-growing company, chances are good you’ll have a higher position two years after you join. At a slow-growth company, no matter how good a job you do, you won’t have the same opportunities to advance. > > When it comes time to leave the successful company, you’ll be able to write your own ticket. Rachleff's advice is actually geared toward aspiring tech stars who are thinking about going to work at a startup. He says don't. But it sounds equally applicable to going to work for a giant company where you're in danger of becoming just another cog. In our last post, we highlighted the [10 San Francisco tech companies you wish you worked for](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/business/2012/10/best-san-francisco-tech-companies/) based on Rachleff's recommendations. They tended toward the fun and quirky. In Silicon Valley the geeks get serious. Rachleff says these 10 private companies, each with revenue between $20 million and $300 million, are among the best you could join to launch a successful career in tech. (Coming next: 10 tech companies you wish you worked for outside of California.) Above: Arista Networks Sun Microsystems' founding hardware engineer [Andy Bechtolsheim](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Bechtolsheim) started Arista in 2005 with partner David Cheriton to build networking switches to power the cloud. This year LinkedIn named Arista [the top Bay Area startup](http://blog.linkedin.com/2012/05/17/top-10-tech-engineering-startups/) for engineers. *Photo: Arista Networks*
Ariel Zambelich/Wired02box-2
Box Box CEO [Aaron Levie](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/business/2012/08/10-questions-with-aaron-levie/) (above) has a hype-free attitude toward Silicon Valley despite the hype surrounding his cloud-storage company. In the seven years since co-founding Los Altos-based Box with the mission of making enterprise software simple, Levie has built the company to 550 employees and secured nearly $300 million in funding. *Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired* [](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/about/#faq13)
03chegg
Chegg Headquartered in Santa Clara, Chegg (chicken + egg) says it offers students millions of textbooks to purchase or rent. With more than 300 employees, Chegg has spent the past few years acquiring smaller startups to build itself out as an all-purpose homework-help service. Perks enjoyed by workers include five paid days off per year to volunteer at community organizations. *Photo: [Majiscup](http://www.flickr.com/photos/cups/5507834638/)/Flickr*
04cloudera
Cloudera Founded in 2009 by open source innovator [Mike Olson](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/02/cloudera-and-apache/), Cloudera has quickly become a go-to service provider for parsing big data. Anchored by open source number-crunching platform [Hadoop](http://hadoop.apache.org/), the Palo Alto company sells support and additional software to businesses panning for gold in the data deluge. *Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired* [](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/about/#faq13)
05drobo
Drobo Drobo lets businesses and even lone business travelers shove multiple hard drives into a small, blinking box for massive amounts of storage and/or redundant data protection — you pick. The San Jose-based company, founded in 2004, is now also pitching its corporate IT-in-a-box devices as a storage solution for home digital media junkies. *Photo: Drobo*
06evernote
Evernote Since launching in 2007, Redwood City-based Evernote has become Silicon Valley's [outboard brain](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson) of choice. Buoyed by its eerie ability to recognize and index text in photos and its seamless cross-platform ubiquity, Evernote's [unconventional work culture](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/business/phil-libin-of-evernote-on-its-unusual-corporate-culture.html?pagewanted=all) includes giving employees $1,000 in spending money if they actually leave for a week and go on a real vacation. *Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired* [](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/about/#faq13)
07imvu
IMVU Mountain View-based IMVU launched in 2004, when most of the world still thought that online social networking would happen via 3-D avatars. While that notion faded with the rise of Facebook, IMVU has held on by staying lean to build a base of 100 million registered users and a churning market in virtual goods. *Photo: IMVU*
08odesk
oDesk Online hiring service oDesk says that more than a half-million employers use its platform to connect with 2.6 million contractors around the world. The Redwood City company, backed by $45 million in VC funding, is banking on the belief that as more and more work moves online, geography will become a largely obsolete barrier to who gets a job. *Photo: [anitakhart](http://www.flickr.com/photos/anitakhart/3415881383/)/Flickr*
09peter-thiel.jpg
Palantir Few Wired readers probably need reminding that a "palantir" is a powerful seeing stone that wizards in Tolkien's *Lord of the Rings* use to peer across vast distances. Co-founded by billionaire investor Peter Thiel (above) in 2004, Palantir Technologies in Palo Alto builds software used by the FBI, CIA, and U.S. military as a crystal ball to predict future acts of terrorism. *Photo: [Fortune Live Media](http://www.flickr.com/photos/fortunelivemedia/7587995416/)/Flickr*
10surveymonkey
SurveyMonkey Ubiquitous online survey company SurveyMonkey says it collects more than 1.5 million responses every day. A survivor of the first dotcom crash, the Palo Alto-based company counts Facebook, Audi, and Samsung among its customers. *Photo: [ankakay](http://www.flickr.com/photos/ankakay/3932234539/)/Flickr*
