“Grandmother of Silicon Valley”’s Palo Alto home sells for $14M

A Palo Alto home owned by Genie Laborde-Griffin, known as “the grandmother of Silicon Valley” for her well-known start-up rental space, has sold for $14 million to an LLC affiliated with apartment manager Vittoria Management, according to public records. 

Laborde-Griffin and husband George Griffin, an orthopedic specialist, lived at 1431 Webster Street, just off Middlefield Road in Palo Alto, for decades. They also owned adjoining parcel 1433 Webster. The two parcels have a combined total of about three-quarters of an acre, with two single-family homes, a pool house, an ADU, and a carport/shed. Griffin died in 2012 and Laborde-Griffin died January 14 at the age of 94, according to their obituaries.

Eva and Jeff Chen of Compass listed the properties together for a combined $15 million, according to the Compass website. Marketing notes tout the “coveted neighborhood with rare opportunity to build new or restore a Spanish Colonial Revival home to its original glory.” 

The Chens declined to comment on the sale or on whether or not Vittoria Management—run by the Giovannotto family, who own and manage multifamily properties in and around Palo Alto—plans to develop the site. A family representative declined to comment. 

Laborde-Griffin was also a landlord who was described as the “Grandmother of Silicon Valley” in a 2016 San Jose Mercury News story that focused on her downtown Palo Alto cottage. It is located a few blocks from her main residence, where she also rented space to “an eclectic group of techies, investors and artists,” who would hold “inner circle parties” there, according to the Mercury News story.  

She bought the downtown cottage in the 1990s to house her own corporate communications consultant offices, but it gained notoriety when she rented its garage and basement out to a series of tech startups that went on to find success. Smart thermostat company Nest rented the property in 2010 when it had only five employees and was acquired by Google for $3.2 billion in 2014. Analytics firm EdgeSpring also rented from Laborde-Griffin and went on to be acquired by Salesforce in 2013. Biotech software company Comprehend, another former tenant, was acquired by Saama Technologies in 2019. 

The famous cottage was not part of the recent deal on Laborde-Griffin’s Webster Street properties. She sold the downtown property at the end of 2020 for $2.6 million, according to property records.

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