Buck's of Woodside is a restaurant in
Woodside, California, that has gained fame as a meeting place for venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs. Like nearby
Sand Hill Road, Buck's has become a fixture of
Silicon Valley.
About
Jamis MacNiven left his career in construction to open the restaurant in 1991. Unhappy with local restaurants, MacNiven decided to create his own.
By 1995, when the
dot-com boom began, word of mouth spread that Buck's was a hotspot for Silicon Valley's most powerful.
The restaurant is close to both
Sand Hill Road—home to the majority of Silicon Valley's venture capitalists—and
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
.
Netscape
Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was onc ...
,
PayPal,
Hotmail and
Tesla Motors are among the companies whose entrepreneurs held early meetings at Buck's.
"Breakfast at Buck's" is the title of the introduction of the book, ''The Startup Game: Inside the Partnership between Venture Capitalists and Entrepreneurs'', by venture capitalist
Bill Draper.
In 2003, ''
Forbes'' magazine named Buck's one of its top business restaurants.
The interior of Buck's features colorful decor, including cowboy boots, a talking buffalo head, a model of the Statue of Liberty wearing a sombrero, and a stuffed alligator.
According to MacNiven,
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a ...
is one of the few Silicon Valley icons who never set foot in his restaurant; MacNiven and the Apple co-founder had a falling out in the 1980s after Jobs hired him to remodel his house.
Buck's nevertheless has a rare photo of Jobs, wearing a set of
Groucho glasses, on display.
When the COVID19 pandemic hit in the spring of 2020, and the resulting restaurant shut-down, Jamis MacNiven decided to retire. In August 2020 Buck's was re-opened by his sons (Tyler MacNiven) who now run it.
Further reading
*
References
External links
*{{Official website, buckswoodside.com
Woodside, California
Culture of Silicon Valley
1991 establishments in California
Restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area
Tourist attractions in Silicon Valley