ALPHA GIRLS:
THE WOMEN UPSTARTS WHO TOOK ON SILICON VALLEY'S MALE CULTURE AND MADE THE DEALS OF A LIFETIME
Join us for a cross-border event where our Silicon Valley headquarters will live-stream a discussion with Julian Guthrie, best selling and award winning author, who recently released the book “Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took On Silicon Valley's Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime.” Joining her for our discussion is venture capitalist Sonja Hoel Perkins who is one of the Alpha Girl subjects of the book. Get inspired by the previously untold stories of women pioneers of Silicon Valley who broke through the glass ceiling. Let’s talk about conquering Silicon Valley’s Male Culture, the impact of diversity, where we’ve been and how to get to where we want to be…
In Gothenburg, you will have the opportunity to ask questions of Julian and Sonja. We will then continue the discussion here live with local panelists in Gothenburg!
Julian Guthrie is a best-selling author, keynote speaker and journalist. She is the author of three books, including two national best sellers. Her latest book, Alpha Girls, is the untold story of pioneering women in Silicon Valley. Described as Hidden Figures meets The Social Network, Alpha Girls is the story of the real unicorns of Silicon Valley – the women who bucked the system and found ways to survive and thrive in the cutthroat, high-stakes, male-dominated world of Silicon Valley. The book explores the rise of such companies as Microsoft, Facebook, Tesla, Oracle, Trulia, Imperva, F5 Networks, Acme Packet, ForeScout, Google, Salesforce and more – all through the eyes of trailblazing “alpha girls” of Silicon Valley. Alpha Girls is being adapted for a television series by Academy Award-winning producer Cathy Schulman.
Ms. Guthrie’s NYT best-seller "How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight” released in September 2017, tells the story of an unforgettable cast of characters who dreamed of getting to space without the government's help. Virgin Group founder Richard Branson wrote the foreword, and Prof. Stephen Hawking wrote the afterword. This cast includes aviators, test pilots, engineering school dropouts, plucky entrepreneurs, NASA retirees, billionaires, and a particularly determined space geek named Peter Diamandis who refused to give up on his outsized dream.
Ms. Guthrie's second book, "The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed Up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, The America's Cup," was published in 2013 and was a national best-seller. It was one of Forbes Magazine's top ten nonfiction books of 2013. Ms. Guthrie spent over a year interviewing Larry Ellison.
As a journalist for twenty years at the San Francisco Chronicle, she won numerous awards, including the Best of the West Award and the Society of Professional Journalists' Public Service Award. Her feature writing and enterprise reporting were nominated multiple times for the Pulitzer Prize.
Sonja Hoel Perkins is the Managing Director of The Perkins Fund, Founder of Broadway Angels, and Founder of Project Glimmer. Considered one of the best performing and most senior professionals in venture capital, she invests broadly in all stages and areas of information technology including Internet, mobile, security, data, communications, consumer and software.
Sonja, whose parents are from Norway, began her career in venture capital in early 1989 when she joined TA Associates as an Investment Analyst. She then joined Symantec in Business Development while attending Harvard Business School, followed by a move to California to join Menlo Ventures in 1994. In 2010, she founded both Broadway Angels and the national nonprofit Project Glimmer. In 2016, she founded The Perkins Fund.
Sonja has invested in over 50 companies throughout her career including “home runs” like Acme Packet, F5 Networks, McAfee Associates, and Q1 Labs. Many of her investments have achieved multi billion dollar valuations in the public markets. In 2015, Worth Magazine ranked Sonja among the 100 Most Powerful People in Finance in the World. Sonja currently serves as an outside director on the board of 128 Technology.
Deborah Lygonis has more than 25 years of experience working with tech startups mainly within the digital space working as a founder, investor and coach. She is currently part owner of nine companies such as Friendbase, Craft Animations, Validicity and Refind Technologies.
Isabella Palmgren is the CEO & Co-founder of Mimbly, that works with water recycling and microplastic filtration. She is an alumni from Chalmers School of Entrepreneurship and competed in the Silicon Vikings Startup World Cup 2019 and won the SWC European title of best startup in Europe and made it into top 10 in the world competitions in San Fransisco in May 2019.
