5 Lessons I Learned From the 'Alpha Girls of Silicon Valley'

Julian Guthrie is the author of a new book "Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took on Silicon Valley’s Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime", is the story of four women who became stars in the cutthroat, male-dominated world of venture capital in Silicon Valley and helped finance and build some of the foremost companies of our time. The main takeaways from this book, are:

1. Your family doesn't need you every minute.

2. Humor works.

3. Don't sit on the sidelines.

4. Find out about the locker room talk.

5. Don't enable underachievement.

These are the essence of the lessons from the book, expressed very succinctly. I heartily suggest that you refer to the article in Fortune to get the very helpful details behind each lesson. This is the link: AlphaGirls .

And who are these highly successful, Alpha Girls? They are none other than MJ Elmore, one of the first women to make partner at a venture firm in the U.S.; Magdalena Yesil, a serial entrepreneur, early e-commerce guru, and founding investor in Salesforce; Sonja Perkins, whose investments made the Internet safer and faster; and Theresia Gouw, who rose through the ranks at Accel Partners and is now cofounder of Aspect Ventures and a founding member of All Raise. I followed the women as they navigated work, family, divorce, cancer, and much more. They suffered setbacks and betrayals but found a way to succeed and become a voice for change.