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This book is a must-read for anyone in business. Power UP gives real, actionable advice on how to charter your own destiny, especially when the odds are stacked against you.
JULIE WAINWRIGHT, founder and CEO of The RealReal
Magdalena and I worked together in the early days of the Internet, introducing concepts that were completely revolutionary, such as the electronic wallet. She is a fearless entrepreneur who worked hard to help early online merchants get off the ground. Some of them went on to become giants, like Amazon. I urge women to be bold like Magdalena and follow their dreams.
ERIC SCHMIDT, executive chairman of Google and parent company Alphabet
I wish I could have given Magdalena Yeils book to my two daughters when they graduated from college. Its the perfect gift for any young woman navigating her career. I am definitely giving it to my two girls, and just as importantly, to their boyfriends, too.
STEVE BLANK, entrepreneur and author of The Startup Owners Manual and Four Steps to Epiphany
My professional mission is to empower women through fashion. Power UP resonated strongly with me. I highly recommend its confident career guidance from an impressive roster of top women leaders.
KAREN WATKINS, COO of Christian Dior
When I reached out to Magdalena in my early days of founding Pono, I benefited greatly from her wisdom and guidance. She is a pragmatic, down-to-earth person who helped me a lot.
NEIL YOUNG, composer, musician, and founder of digital music startup Pono
Power UP offers the no-nonsense optimism and encouragement women need to persevere in technology, an industry where so much is stacked against them. Its crammed with sage advice and insider stories to enlighten the next generation of women in tech.
ADRIANA GASCOIGNE, founder and CEO of Girls in Tech
This book should be required reading for anyone building a company or making a career as we head into the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The lessons Magdalena Yeil offers from her remarkable work pioneering the commercial Internet are more relevant than ever.
MURAT SNMEZ, member of the World Economic Forum Managing Board
Technology is changing how business is conducted in all industries. Women who seize technology-related opportunities and put the advice offered in Power UP to work will confidently transform businesses and emerge as future leaders of the new economy.
RON CONWAY, founder of SVAngel
Magdalena Yeil offers powerful leadership lessons from her journey to becoming a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor. She drops the reader into vividly recounted, career-defining moments to help them navigate and overcome gender bias in their own lives.
CAROLINE SIMARD, senior director of research at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University
To Kevork Yeil, the man who believed in me more than anyone else ever has or will. Thank you, Dad, for giving me the gift of self-confidence and for teaching me to stand on my own two legs, no matter how wobbly.
I will forever cherish our eighteen years together.
When Magdalena Yeil first asked me to write the foreword for Power UP, my reaction was, Are you sure? Wouldnt another woman who has broken the glass ceiling be the more appropriate choice for a book written for women on how to succeed and lead in todays business world?
No, Magdalena told me in her indomitable way. It should be you. After all, gender is not a just a womans issue. Which is, of course, true. How could I say no? Magdalenas story traces back to the earliest days of Salesforce and her role in helping us launch the company, survive the dot-com bust, and enter the public market with our IPO.
Magdalena and I first met in 1994. She quickly became a friend, adviser, and then the first investor in Salesforce. She immediately understood our vision to revolutionize the software industry with a new technology model, delivering business software via the cloud; a new business model, buying software on a subscription basis; and a new integrated philanthropic model, donating 1 percent of Salesforces product, 1 percent of Salesforces equity, and 1 percent of employees time to help nonprofits achieve their missions.
And with her clear-eyed focus and direct style, she let me know when she felt it was time to go bigger, to bring in other investors, and even for me to finally cut the cord with Oracle, where I had worked for thirteen years. Ive told these stories in my own book Behind the Cloud, and here you get Magdalenas side of the story. I can tell you that at pivotal times in my own career I followed Magdalenas advice and appreciated her fearless, practical approach to all that came our way. We started out as ten people crammed into a small San Francisco apartment in 1999, and now Salesforce is a Fortune 500 company with more than twenty-five thousand people driving customer success for 150,000-plus companies around the world.
Although her professional stories and successes are many, its her personal story here that inspires me. As a hardworking immigrant who came to America from Turkey in the late 1970s, Magdalena has a uniquely American success story. Through perseverance, determination, and an unwavering belief in her own talent, Magdalena forged a path, first in the technology industry and then venture capital at a time when not many women did.
A more diverse and inclusive workplace is critical to building the most innovative products and successful companies. The tech industry in particular has been under fire for its lack of diversity, particularly when it comes to women and underrepresented minorities in leadership and technology roles. The World Economic Forum estimates that it will take up to 170 years for the worlds women to earn wages equitable to mens.