Alpha Girls: Inspiring Women Entrepreneurs Who Challenged Silicon Valley's Male Culture | Startup Success Stories | Perfect for Aspiring Female Founders & Business Leaders

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."