That's Silicon Valley-speak for trumpeting the arrival of your new startup in a press release and asking lots of reporters to repeat what it says. In this case, the press release is a snoozer. It's the kind of thing most reporters—even tech reporters—toss into the trash folder. It'll show up in The Wall Street Journal, but you'll probably skip over it because of the word networking. And that's too bad. This is a startup whose ideas will shift just about the entire tech industry.

Barefoot is building a new breed of chip that will alter the inner workings of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and LinkedIn. It will force a response from hardware giants like Cisco and big chip makers like Intel and Broadcom. It will feed the evolution of telecommunication empires like AT&T.