The valley is filled with young entrepreneurs, hoping to create a start-up. The so-called old guard, such as venture capitalist Doerr and even the young turks, such as Zuckerberg, want to foster more innovation and more success stories. Trulioo co-founder Steve Ufford is working on his fourth start-up in a cubicle at Plug-n-Play, an incubator where entrepreneurs work. If he sat down with the president, he'd express concern about improving education, especially in math and science.
"As a country, if we could figure out a way to build programs and support systems to encourage people to go into engineering and reward them accordingly, then that would be I think an important part of the future," said Ufford.
Since its beginning, the Valley has been a magnet for immigrants with big dreams and ideas. The Irish Technology Center in San Jose is home to 22 start-ups. They'd like to see movement on a plan to give immigrants preferential visas if they bring in capital and start up a company that creates jobs for Americans.
"Our competition is every other city in the world, and leading in education and leading in supporting that young innovator that is coming to Silicon Valley to set up their company and be successful and become the next Google or the next Facebook is what we want to make happen," said John Hartnett from the Irish Technology Leadership Group.
The president will visit a new chip fabrication plant in Oregon after he leaves the Bay Area. Intel's message also will be the need for stronger education.
"We have about 4,000 Ph.D.'s that work for us Our average factory education for a worker in our factory is three and a half years of college. So it's a very important area for us," said Intel corporate spokesman Chuck Mulloy.
The litmus test of this president's visit to Silicon Valley will be whether this is a one-time event or whether a bridge has been permanently established to link both the Valley with the White House.
