Event: YES CommUNITY Open House
Date: September 17, 2024
Time: 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Location: YES Centre
Join us for an enlightening and engaging open house featuring Sharon Gillenwater, a distinguished tech founder, author, and entrepreneur. This exclusive event will provide a unique opportunity to connect with fellow entrepreneurs and key players in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Special Highlight: Sharon Gillenwater will share her remarkable journey from startup to a $25 million tech exit with Boardroom Insiders. Learn firsthand about her strategies for building a successful business and gain valuable insights that could transform your own entrepreneurial endeavors.
The evening will also include a lively Q&A session, networking opportunities, and a chance to explore new possibilities within the community.
Sharon K. Gillenwater is a tech startup founder who successfully built, scaled and sold Boardroom Insiders for $25 million in 2022. She chronicles this journey in her first book, Scaling With Soul: How I Built & Sold a $25 Million Tech Company Without Being an A**hole. Today, her mission is to demystify what it takes to build, scale and sell a successful tech startup, making entrepreneurial success more accessible to all.
The first in her family to go to college, Sharon discovered her love of business at age 30, and integrated herself into the tech and marketing world in San Francisco. Her first job in San Francisco was working in sales at a startup. She then went on to found a company specializing in email newsletters ahead of the 2001 dot com bust. After that venture failed, Sharon became an independent consultant and developed a successful business working for major tech companies including EMC, IBM, VMware, RSA, Symantec, Cisco, Microsoft, NetApp, VMware, Adobe, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Siebel Systems, and Google.
In 2008 at the age of 43, Sharon founded Boardroom Insiders by identifying a universal need among her consulting clients, and evolving her consulting services into a digital, self-service product. She recruited a partner to join her in 2011, and scaled the startup into a company that she sold in early 2022 for $25 million to Euromoney (now Altrata). Under Sharon’s leadership, Boardroom Insiders was named to the Inc. 5000, the 5,000 fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. based on their revenue growth rate.
Sharon now consults as a SaaS startup advisor, as a mentor and coach for aspiring tech entrepreneurs, is a professional speaker, and has become a successful content creator with an audience of more than 30K people across platforms. Sharon lives in San Francisco with her husband and pets. She is a mother of two adult children. She enjoys traveling, strategy games (especially mahjongg), and discussing politics.