14 Incredible Women To Watch In Silicon Valley

Last week we revealed our annual Silicon Valley 100 list of people doing the coolest things in tech.

Advertisement

A few women stood out as movers and shakers last year.

Sheryl Sandberg could become a self made billionaire as the COO of Facebook. Ernestine Fu, a Stanford student, was named San Francisco's youngest venture capitalist by Forbes.

Jessica Scorpio of Getaround
LinkedIn
Advertisement

Kleiner Perkins' Mary Meeker is one of Silicon Valley's most knowledgeable tech gurus

Mary Meeker web 2.0

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Mary Meeker, one of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers' most prized partners, joined a lot of high-profile boards last year—including SoundCloud, as part of its $50 million round.

She's one of the most knowledgeable tech gurus in the valley—so be sure to see her knock-out presentation on the state of the web from the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco last year.

Advertisement

Sukhinder Singh Cassidy founded Joyus, a video shopping site

sukhinder tbi

Chairman and Founder, Joyus.com

Most e-commerce sites have pictures of their products. Former executive Sukhinder Singh Cassidy has a startup that posts videos instead. Joyus wants to become the pioneering platform for video-driven e-commerce.

Advertisement

Mariam Naficy already sold one $100 million company in her 20's. Now she has a new startup, Minted.

Mariam Naficy
Minted.com

CEO and Founder, Minted.com

During the first dotcom bubble, then 28-year-old Naficy and her cofounder Varsha Rao sold their online makeup company Eve for $110 million to Idealab.

Now Naficy is back in the startup scene. She founded San Francisco-based Minted.com, an e-commerce company that sells emerging designers' work, and raised a $5.5 million Series B round in 2011.

Advertisement

AllThingsD's Kara Swisher is one of tech's most formidable reporters

Kara Swisher

Co-Executive Editor, AllThingsD

Kara Swisher continues to be one of the most formidable reporters in the valley, and all but owned coverage of the chaos within Yahoo as it searched for a new CEO and board

Advertisement

Sarah Lacy left TechCrunch and took it upon herself to create a startup site of record, PandoDaily.

sarah lacy 2

Founder, PandoDaily

Sarah Lacy left TechCrunch last year to found her own news site called PandoDaily. She said she wants to build the "site of record" for startups in Silicon Valley, and she raised $2.5 million from a ton of investors to do it.

Advertisement

Ernestine Fu became the youngest venture capitalist in Silicon Valley and graced the cover of Forbes.

Ernestine Fu
Ernestine Fu was named the youngest VC in Silicon Valley by Forbes. NextGen Journal

Associate, Aslop Louie Partners; Student, Stanford

20-year-old Ernestine Fu joined VC firm Alsop Louie Partners as an associate in March and made the cover of Forbes magazine in August.  She was named the youngest investor in the Valley.

Advertisement

Alison Pincus and Susan Feldman founded a $440 million company, One Kings Lane

Susan Feldman Alison Pincus One Kings Lane

Cofounders, One Kings Lane

Flash sales site One Kings Lane is already bringing in more than $100 million in revenue after being up and running for about two years.

It also raised $40 million last year to expand even more and it's valued at $440 million.

Advertisement

Julia Hartz partnered with her husband Kevin and created mega ticketing company, Eventbrite.

Kevin Julia Hartz Eventbrite founders

CEO and Cofounders, Eventbrite

Eventbrite raised $50 million last summer, opened an office in London, and hired ex-Googler Stephanie Hannon, as VP of International. It might even toy with the idea of an IPO in late 2012.

It was founded by husband-wife team, Kevin and Julia Hartz.

Advertisement

Lisa Sugar is creating a ladyblog empire, Sugar Media.

Brian and Lisa Sugar
Flickr/Brian Solis

Cofounder, Sugar Inc.

Sugar is a ladyblog empire. In 2011, cofounders Brian and Lisa Sugar put some serious muscle behind its video production, and millions of unique viewers found their way to the content.

Advertisement

Jessica Scorpio won TechCrunch Disrupt for her "Airbnb of car rentals" company, GetAround.

Jessica Scorpio of Getaround
LinkedIn

CEO and cofounders, GetAround

GetAround was the winner of TechCrunch Disrupt 2011. It allows users to rent cars from each other. If you don't mind getting eye rolls, you can call it the "AirBNB of car rentals."

Advertisement

Leah Busque's startup, TaskRabbit, caught fire (in a good way).

Leah Busque Taskrabbit
Leah Busque founded TaskRabbit in 2008 TaskRabbit

Founder and CPO, TaskRabbit

Busque launched TaskRabbit in 2008. TaskRabbit is a local network that allows users to post and complete tasks in their neighborhoods. Think Craigslist and Twitter mushed together.

Advertisement

Sheryl Sandberg could become one of the wealthiest self-made women in the world.

Sheryl Sandberg
Facebook

Chief Operating Officer, Facebook

In 2011, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg grew the company's ad business to a $4 billion revenue run rate. When Facebook finally sells stock to the public this year, she has a chance to become one of the world's few self-made billionaire women.

Advertisement

Meg Whitman became CEO of HP.

Meg Whitman
Joe Seer / Shutterstock.com

CEO, HP

It was a wildly tumultuous year at HP and Whitman was right in the middle of it all. Lane fired new CEO Leo Apotheker and installed Whitman. She's trying to restore order to the company which was rocked by the sudden departure of Mark Hurd. 

Now check out the complete list of Silicon Valley stars:

silicon-valley-100-front-image
Jon Terbush/Business Insider

The Silicon Valley 100 >>

Startups
Advertisement
Close icon Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.