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Alpha Girls

The Women Upstarts who Took on Silicon Valley's Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime

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The unforgettable story of four women who, through grit and ingenuity, became stars in the cutthroat, high-stakes, male-dominated world of venture capital in Silicon Valley and helped build some of the foremost companies of our time. In Alpha Girls, award-winning journalist Julian Guthrie takes readers behind the closed doors of venture capital, an industry that transforms economies and shapes how we live. We follow the lives and careers of four women who were largely written out of history - until now. Magdalena Yesil arrived in America from Turkey with $43 to her name and would go on to help Marc Benioff build Salesforce. Mary Jane Elmore went from the cornfields of Indiana to Stanford and on to the storied venture capital firm IVP - where she was one of the first women in the United States to make partner. Theresia Gouw, an overachieving first-generation Asian American from a working-class town, helped land and build companies including Facebook, Trulia, Imperva and ForeScout. Sonja Hoel, the first woman investing partner at Menlo Ventures, invested in McAfee, Hotmail, Acme Packet and F5 Networks as well as founding an all-women's investment group and a national nonprofit for girls. These women, juggling work and family, shaped the tech landscape we know today while overcoming unequal pay, actual punches, betrayals and the sexist attitudes prevalent in Silicon Valley. Despite the setbacks, they would rise again to rewrite the rules for an industry they love. Alpha Girls reveals their untold stories.

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