Alpha Girls Of Silicon Valley

You’ve heard about the start-ups and 25-year-old CEOs but what is working, dressing and dating in the tech mecca really like for women? Alexandra Wolfe headed to the Valley to find out.

For her new book Valley of the Gods, Alexandra Wolfe spent two years charting the experiences of young men and women starting out in California’s Silicon Valley. One was Laura Deming, 23, a partner and founder of The Longevity Fund, an investment firm focused on ageing and life extension.

Her whole life, Laura Deming was different to the rest. Homeschooled in New Zealand, Deming finished high school at 14 and enrolled at Boston’s MIT as the school’s youngest sophomore. As a 17-year-old she became a recipient of the prestigious Thiel Fellowship to fund her desire to “cure’’ ageing and moved to California’s fabled Silicon Valley to take up residence in a share house with other Thiel scholarship winners.

Upon arrival, Deming realised that being female in Silicon Valley was different than it was on the East Coast. The conversations women had with one another, and also with men, were different – as were the social circles they aspired to join and the clothes they wore. Deming found that walking through the Valley’s main towns – Mountain View, Sunnyvale or Palo Alto – in a dress was akin to getting ready for the prom at noon, or it would label a woman as an East Coast visitor, or maybe a costume-party guest. Few women wore heels, and walking down University Avenue, Palo Alto’s main drag, you’d be hard-pressed to find a single lingerie shop. Most ready-to-wear clothes were for camping. Wrap or shawl? Forget it. Polar fleeces were for throwing on after the sun went down.