Women who took Silicon Valley’s male culture and won

Over the past five years Silicon Valley the US tech sector has been submerged by stories of sexual harassment and discrimination.

Julian Guthrie’s latest book  “ Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who took On Silicon Valley’s Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime”,  charts the lives of four impressive female businesspeople and investors who made it, against the odds, in Silicon Valley: Magdalena Yesil, Mary Jane Elmore, Theresia Gouw and Sonja Hoel. Between them they helped build businesses including Saleforce and Facebook and made it to partner at elite venture capital firms such as IVP and Accel. The untold stories of women who hustled their way past the glass ceiling, with a young Elmore even following recruiters to the bathroom to ask for interviews. The women each took different routes to success, with good humour, a thick skin and hard work – arguing women should not bow to gender roles even in the face of pressure.

94 per cent of investing partners at venture capital firms are men… less than 2 per cent of the venture dollars go to start-ups founded by women ( less than 1 per cent to women of colour) and roughly 85 per cent  of the tech employees at top companies are men” Guthrie reminds us.

The stories of these girls inspire, reveal and surprise us with their four extraordinary careers asking readers to reach their own conclusions about how these women navigated very male-dominated worlds.

 One of the anecdotes are truly extraordinary,  like Robin Richards Donohoe one in which “Richards”  who gives her name to private equity firm Draper Richards – recalls the “mischievous” reaction of legendary American venture capitalist Bill Draper when entrepreneurs itch a new type of condoms.  “ My partner Bill ( Draper) played right into it,” Robin aid “ He urged me to pursue the deal and enlist my husband for product testing and product recap.”

Alpha Girls is full of details  that bring life into events from a description of the floor-length gowns worn by Yesil in the 1980s to the conversations and phone calls ahead of meetings and deals.

Women might today reject a culture that still patronises and pigeonholes women, while expecting them to do it all. The four women from diverse backgrounds, are often known for their attractive appearances and superhuman ability to juggle children and work .

Alpha Girls made their careers by being strong and unflappable, by wearing their Teflon suites and playing by rules established by men” perhaps it’s time those rules changed.

Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took On Silicon Valley’s Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime by Juilan Guthrie, Little Brown, £14.99, 304 pages.