Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took On Silicon Valley's Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime

Julian Guthrie's penetrating and elegantly written new non-fiction must-read, "Alpha Girls," tells the remarkable story of four brilliant, tough-skinned women who succeed in a man's world, venture capital serving Silicon Valley. Remarkable in part because their stories and those of other women who help launch innovations in technology and other world-changing sectors had not been told.That should not come as a surprise. Look at the changing demographic of San Francisco's Financial District and the South of Market neighborhood: it's a fraternity of casually dressed tribes, with a few women here and there, populating an economy supported by the men, primarily, of venture capital firms. As Guthrie notes, three-quarters of U.S. venture capital firms have no women investing partners. Of the firms that have hired women as check-writing partners, most have just one woman partner, Guthrie writes. Overt sexism is in part to blame, but so, too, is the wholesale failure in this and countless other sectors to take advantage of how women and indeed diversity can enrich and broaden business opportunities and vision. The point is underscored repeatedly in "Alpha Girls."These women have done that -- unheralded, until now -- funding and advising Salesforce, Google, Facebook and other major enterprises, as well as many others rooted in simply great ideas, like Hint Water of San Francisco, a beverage company founded by Kara Goldin who wanted to lose weight and quit diet soda. Hint Water is now a $100-million-a-year business.The four women in this book, Magdalena Yesil, Mary Jane Elmore, Theresia Gouw and Sonja Perkins, were self-starters to begin with, were graduated from very good schools, have perseverance, are resilient, driven and on top of that, moms. They bring a woman's perspective and the book is rich in examples of the differing gender perceptions the women discovered along the way. For example, they found men use philanthropy to advance themselves, while women use it to advanced others. There's a lesson for all of us, among many, in "Alpha Girls."

Julian Guthrie has created such an incredible book, highlighting women who have become my idols in technology. Below is an excerpt of a critical essay I was inspired to write about Alpha Girls:"I finished the novel with sticky notes of quotes and random scraps of information to further my research. Reading this book while working in San Francisco unintentionally forced me to see the industry through the eyes of these women: if I heard a prejudiced comment, I started to react like the Alpha Girls; if I was told a task was too difficult for me, I made sure to succeed; and if I wasn’t sure of a decision, I would ask for help from a trusted source instead of remaining silent. “There are so many lessons learned in this book” (271) and I wish I could include them all here. Essentially, you can’t play the game unless you’re in it. I’m excited about a female-founded future."To anyone looking for advice about navigating the challenges of male-dominated sectors, for inspiration content for young girls and boys, or to feel the drive to create a more equitable ecosystem, look no further than Alpha Girls.

Alpha Girls profiles four women who rode the crest of second-wave feminism to achieve success in a world that is still dominated by men.This is not a book about the VC industry per se, or about the evolution of tech in Silicon Valley, though it touches on both topics. By diving deep into the lives of these four women, the book underscores, over and over again, how tough it is to be female in a culture that not only doesn't welcome women, it actively tries to discourage them. After a widely publicized discrimination lawsuit by VC Ellen Pao (who wrote her own book) a VC was even quoted as saying that his firm "would never hire another woman as an investing partner" because "they didn't want to be Paod." Oh. Nice.I chose to read this book as I live in Menlo Park, VC capital of the world, know one of the four women (kids in class together), and more than a few of the dozens of people mentioned in the book. I shopped at the same California Avenue thrift store where Magdalena bought her costumes -- that store, and that Palo Alto, are long gone. But even readers without personal connections will be both fascinated and horrified by this close-up look. To succeed as a female in the VC field requires a high level of smarts, typically an MBA from a school like Stanford or Harvard, and a certain kind of charm plus a tough exterior-- and even so, most/all women still run into the kinds of roadblocks the book describes. Decades after women began joining these firms in significant numbers, there remains a toxic environment; why that persists we can only speculate.The book falters when it tries to spice up the narrative with anecdotes about encounters with founders of Google, Facebook, Salesforce, and others. There is very little that's new here, and I would have liked to have learned more about investments that didn't work out, since most don't. The 90s, the dotcom heyday, also motivated an unprecedented number of women to seek venture capital, and including those stories would have been a welcome complement to the book, especially as the marquee successes were almost exclusively male.Except for a brief interlude describing a women's retreat in Hawaii (it sounded exhausting!) the book chronicles the careers and lives of its subjects chronologically, beginning in 1980 and ending in 2018. Each part includes anecdotes about each of the four -- except for the retreat, they're rarely together -- and because the narrative is constantly switching gears, the stories feel disjointed and the overall effect is muddled. Then there are a few gratuitous celebrity moments -- wow, she saw Joe Montana at her gym! -- that were apparently intended to spark interest but have the opposite impact.The book began as a 5-star read for me, and by the end it felt like a 3.5 star, and falling. My takeaway: if you're a woman who wants to succeed as a VC, put on your thickest armor, make a lot of money, and then take your cash and find better ways to invest it. Oh, and don't expect your colleagues to visit when you're hospitalized and undergoing cancer treatment.

Very inspiring!A must read for all the women especially in tech.The book walks through most of the problems which women in technology face in a Male dominated environment and how these 4 women dealt with these issues in their own ways and had highly successful careers.

5 stars

I found it hard to read, the way it is divided makes it very confusing to keep track of all 4 alpha girls

Interesting story- good book for business teachers!