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Penny Herscher
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Penny is a serial entrepreneur and second time CEO. Her CEO was job with Simplex Solutions – a software provider in the electronic design automation space - which she took public in 2001 and sold to Cadence Design Systems in 2002. Her current company is FirstRain which is growing fast and which provides enterprise customer intelligence to the world's largest companies.

Originally a mathematician from Cambridge University in England, Penny worked in software engineering, marketing, business development and general management on her path to CEO. She’s a big believer in diversity – both in building careers paths and in building teams – to bring richer experience into leadership and decision making.

Penny serves on the boards of FirstRain, JDSU and Rambus and the non-profit Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology. She speaks on entrepreneurship, career management and technology challenges and has taught at the Haas Business School at Berkeley, Stanford, Boston University and Santa Clara business schools as well as for numerous industry organizations and women's career development organizations.

Blog Entries by Penny Herscher

Wonder Where the Women in Power Are? Look to Silicon Valley

(4) Comments | Posted March 13, 2013 | 3:12 PM

There is a tectonic shift happening and we're living the future right now here in technologyland. Women are gaining and holding power at a rate we have never seen before and finally they are openly talking about it.

Sheryl Sandberg's well-marketed new book Lean In, is stirring up the timely...

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Women Computer Scientists -- Yes, They Exist!

(9) Comments | Posted October 4, 2012 | 2:02 PM

Women are doing some amazing work in Computer Science and Engineering, how come we don't know about them? We all know the about the stereotypical hot start-up out of Silicon Valley led by some twenty-something white guy but we don't hear much about women entrepreneurs, computer scientists, researchers and business...

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Birth Control Battles and Women in Tech

(576) Comments | Posted August 23, 2012 | 11:47 AM

Would I have the career I have today without having had easy access to birth control? I doubt it. Tech women are like any other women. Most of us 'successful' technical women were uninsured or low-income at the beginning of our careers, including those of us in Silicon Valley. We...

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Why the Activist Investors in Yahoo! and Chesapeake Travel in Packs

(0) Comments | Posted June 13, 2012 | 7:25 PM

Have you ever wondered why activist shareholders travel in packs? It's because they are significantly less effective alone -- just like any other minority on a board.

Activists (often hedge funds) accumulate a position in a stock because they want to make change happen at a company and, by making...

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Golf Not Required to Get Ahead in Silicon Valley

(2) Comments | Posted June 6, 2012 | 5:21 PM

It's different here. Yes it's not perfect, but it is so different. We don't care if Mark Zuckerberg wears a hoodie -- men don't wear ties here -- and the last point in Julie Steinberg's recent Wall Street Journal article on the "Nine Rules Women Must Follow To...

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Top 5 Reasons to Understand Your Customer's Customer

(1) Comments | Posted May 10, 2012 | 5:14 PM

The world is slowly climbing out of the great recession as companies around the world begin to increase investment and hiring. But for B2B sales teams looking to recapture growth during these early days, it's critical to understand who's really paying their bills and keeping the lights on -- and...

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Girl, Stop Crying and Talk Like a Man

(146) Comments | Posted April 20, 2012 | 4:26 PM

The same issue comes up every time I mentor technical women:

"I offer an idea at a meeting, no one listens to me and then a man says the same thing and everyone listens."

Often the woman is the only woman on a team and so the only woman in...

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Engineering Is the Way to Bring Jobs Back to America

(213) Comments | Posted October 25, 2011 | 7:57 PM

We are facing an ongoing threat to America's global economic leadership and increasing the number of engineers in our workforce is one powerful way we can change our destiny as a country.

In Silicon Valley we have one engineering job open for every two engineers that are employed -- this...

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How to Fire a CEO

(17) Comments | Posted September 22, 2011 | 9:25 PM

Let's face it, CEOs get fired all the time.

CEOs with less than 5 years of experience are more likely than long-standing ones to be fired, so it's going to happen all the time but there are ways to do it, and ways not to.

Yahoo's

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Five Keys to Leadership for Women in Technology

(8) Comments | Posted September 18, 2011 | 5:25 PM

Do women lead differently than men? Yes, usually. Do women face more barriers than men? Frequently. But do women sometimes hold themselves back ? Yes.

Tech companies are competitive and dominated by men. Fact. So how, as a woman, do you adapt and learn how to lead in that environment?...

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What Women Want: To Make Money!

(64) Comments | Posted May 10, 2011 | 8:54 PM

In a world where women still make less money than men for the same job, iVillage and Today.com have released a survey that shows -- shock horror -- that salary is the most important criteria for a woman choosing a job.

"97% of working moms surveyed saying that...

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Enough Spam in My Search Already

(48) Comments | Posted January 14, 2011 | 7:21 PM

Google is getting cluttered up in a way that is now starting to impact its usefulness as a search engine -- and we users need a better solution. There has been a tirade from a number of writers over the last few months driven both by Google getting...

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The Latest Web Search Development: From Intentions to Insights

(3) Comments | Posted July 6, 2010 | 4:29 PM

John Batelle, one of the gurus of Search, wrote as early as 2004 that the secret of Google's success was its understanding of the web as a database of intentions. He described the web as "a place holder for the intentions of humankind -- a massive database of desires, needs,...

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When "Sealing the Deal" Doesn't Involve a Beer

(0) Comments | Posted June 28, 2010 | 6:07 PM

We all sell, all the time, and there are endless jokes and ads about how knowledge of the person you are selling to (whatever you may be selling) can help you seal the deal.

Everyone's been there -- figuring out the likes and dislikes of someone we want...

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Entrepreneurs -- Manage Yourselves!

(3) Comments | Posted June 9, 2010 | 6:14 PM

It's a fact that women entrepreneurs only get 4.2% of the venture funding in the U.S., but the reasons why are more murky -- and some would say women hurt themselves with the venture capitalist community by being emotional.

I sat on a panel yesterday at the Astia...

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Google Makeover Is a Catch-Up Step in the Right Direction

(8) Comments | Posted May 6, 2010 | 9:49 PM

On May 5, Google announced a new navigational bar for their search results along with new contextually relevant search tools -- and took a step in right direction towards becoming an application. John Battelle, one of the search industry's big thinkers wrote a thoughtful piece on why this...

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From BP and Wall Street: Corporate Culture Impacts Performance

(0) Comments | Posted May 4, 2010 | 4:21 PM

The examples in today's news of the disconnect between a corporation's mission statement and its actions teach that poor company values can lead to poor company performance -- and vice-versa.

BP is living the corporate image nightmare. A company with a terrific ad campaign ("Beyond Petroleum" -- you'd think it...

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A Vacation Policy for the New Decade

(14) Comments | Posted January 6, 2010 | 1:12 PM

It's well known that US employees don't get as much vacation as employees in Europe do, and they typically don't take all the vacation they are given -- and yet we also know that vacation is really important to long term health and employee satisfaction. So how do we fix...

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Ratcheting Up CEO Pay -- Or Competing For Talent?

(63) Comments | Posted August 30, 2009 | 1:46 PM

If you were on the compensation committee of a public company board how would you set the CEO's pay?

There is so much written about fat cat CEOs and their unfair pay packages that this is a question worth pondering (if you care). The really hard part about it is...

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The Death of Venture Capital as We Know It

(26) Comments | Posted June 3, 2009 | 10:12 PM

A massive shakeout of venture capital firms has been predicted for years but it is finally going to happen over the next year because of a perfect storm of timing.

There are countless books, a few movies and mountains of silicon valley gossip about the good...

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