Salesforce founder Marc Benioff is making headlines in Silicon Valley once again. This time, however, the news is not centred on SaaS, cloud computing or lingering feuds with Larry Ellison, but about making a sizeable donation to help San Francisco's homeless.

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee announced that Benioff and his wife Lynne, along with the Salesforce Foundation, will help to establish a $3m 'Home for the Holidays' fund to provide housing and rent assistance for homeless families in the city.

"We talked about our plans for addressing this issue, and within 24 hours, the Benioffs agreed to pledge $1.5m in grants to jump-start the new initiative," Lee said in a statement.

"I thank Marc and Lynne for their leadership and their support of homeless families in need, especially now during the holiday season."

Lee added that the campaign will back an initiative to provide 30 to 40 families with housing, a considerable effort in a city where housing can be scarce and among the most expensive in the country.

One of the most eagerly anticipated financial events in Silicon Valley is the upcomming initial public offering (IPO) of social gaming firm Zynga.

The success of titles such as FarmVille has made Zynga one of the hottest companies in the business, and the IPO is being watched closely by those hoping for an economic boom in the technology sector.

However, reports suggest that there is some unrest among Zynga's executives over the way the stock is being distributed.

A report in The Wall Street Journal claimed that Zynga bosses have told employees to hand over some of their stock options or face termination. The report said that the company felt it gave some individuals overly generous options and is now looking to reclaim the shares ahead of the IPO.

Zynga then issued its own comment on the matter, accusing the paper of misrepresenting its "meritocracy" system.

"We believe that every employee deserves the same opportunity to lead," Zynga chief executive Mark Pinkus told employees. "It's not about where or when you enter Zynga, it's how far you can grow."

Pinkus more or less concluded that such events will become more common as the company nears the IPO, and seems to take the incident in his stride, which is sensible. If a few employees grumbling to the press about their stock options is enough to rattle a CEO, he'll have no chance when it comes to dealing with shareholders.

As we have seen, things can get much worse when there is a board of directors involved.

One of the most famous routes in the technology world is the flight from Boston to San Francisco. The trip has been made by many a young engineer and would-be entrepreneur, leaving the halls of MIT and Harvard for the venture capital firms and start-up incubaters of Silicon Valley.

But not everyone is sold on the California dream. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said recently that, if he had it to do all over again, he would have given Silicon Valley the cold shoulder and stayed back east.

Speaking at an event called Startup School, Zuckerberg criticised the culture in Silicon Valley as "short-sighted", and said that, if he were to go back and start a new company, he would do it in Boston.

The comment makes for an interesting debate, not just because it comes from one of the biggest names in the business world today. Zuckerberg acknowledged that he could not have built Facebook without moving to Silicon Valley, but said that the growth of hubs in Boston, New York and London has made starting a company without moving to Silicon Valley a far more viable proposition.

Zuckerberg also made an interesting point about the culture of Silicon Valley and its short-term demands. The region has seen two major crashes in the past decade, the dot-com bust and the fallout from the economic turmoil, meaning that investors who have been burned want the assurance of getting their money back as soon as possible.

Perhaps Zuckerberg is on to something. Firms in other regions could be more patient with their investments and let entrepreneurs operate with a slightly looser leash. London has its own economic challenges to navigate, but there is some merit to the idea that firms moving into Tech City will have more time to turn a profit than if they started up in Sunnyvale or San Francisco.