The Secret Life of Start-Ups: An Inside Story on the Perennial Silicon Valley Revolution

A kind of innovation fever has captured the imagination of many creative business professionals.

Reflecting the trend are websites like StartUpIndustry.com, collecting founders' stories, StartUpProfessionals.com providing daily strategy advice, and pitch events like the Mass challenge and DEMO.

As with any business innovation, competition and sacrifice go with the territory. Not everyone is a born inventor or intrepid entrepreneur. That's why fledgling companies like Satalia, a cloud-based software and chip design optimization service, seek the support and resources an incubator environment can offer.

Pursuing the dream, says Satalia's founder Daniel Hulme, requires "a cocktail of tenacity, unbounded-optimism, self-delusion, adaptability...and vision." The European Ph.D. left a successful career to pursue his high-tech ambition, flying dozens of times across the Atlantic from London to Sunnyvale to develop his company. He sacrificed everything -- a good salary, his flat, his relationship, and even his cat to make it happen.

Incubators can give companies like Satalia a forum to share, spar, and refine ideas. Many, like Plug and Play, provide firsthand access to Venture Capitalists (VCs), senior staff for strategic planning, free legal advice, as well as seminars on stock capitalization, early-stage sales skills, and new technology developments like mobile, SaaS, and social media.

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