NSCP, SUNW, and CSCO did not in any way define dotcom-1.0. Except maybe in the national press (Fortune, WSJ, etc). They were important parts, but not particularly special on any axis: money, employees, technology, cachet.
NSCP IPO was a defining moment, but the corporation was ultimately nothing in the boom. CSCO and SUNW were not even startups, they just produced higher volumes of their (mostly) existing product lines.
Obviously we're coming from different frames of reference, but I stick to my assertion. SF city was crawling with startups, startup money, and startup employees. So was SV.
All the hype and money and "cachet" was in Silicon Valley during dot.com boom.
Having been deeply embedded in that era of Silicon Valley, I can't think of a single recognizable tech company in SF in those days. Later, absolutely. But not in the late 90s boom.
Netscape IPO kicked it off and Sun and Cisco took it to the heights now known as the dot.com boom.
There was nothing of note up in SF in those days. SF was the place to go up to party, but no known companies existed there. Everyone I knew who lived in SF would commute down to Silicon Valley in the 90s.
After the dotcom bust, when tech morphed away from actual tech and into social media, SF became a hotspot. But that was several years later after the crash.