The Forgotten Women of Early Tech Startups

There is a very common mythos surrounding individual brilliance attached to innovation in the world of technology. That tends to be the dominant narrative of the industry: a lone (mostly male) genius, like Steve Jobs building Apple, Bill Gates founding Microsoft, or Elon Musk revolutionizing absolutely everything, from money to space travel.

But beneath these well-trodden stories lie the forgotten architects of innovation: the women whose contributions laid the groundwork for the digital age but whose names rarely appear in the annals of tech history.

A Hidden History: Jean Jennings Bartik and the ENIAC Programmers

First on the list is a lesser-known, yet incredible, Jean Jennings Bartik. She was among the very first programmers of ENIAC, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer—the world's very first general-purpose computer. Throughout the 1940s, Bartik and the co-workers she worked with were in charge of the operation of this gargantuan machine, filling a whole room.

They had to invent programming techniques from scratch, without a manual or precedence—debugging complex systems by trial and error. Their work established the algorithms and processes upon which modern computing is built.

But though their achievement was epochal, Bartik and most of her colleagues were doomed to obscurity. Their contributions were demeaned as "clerical work," a narrative framed by the gender stereotypes of their time.

These women were not even invited to talk about it when the ENIAC was revealed to the public in 1946. Instead, their work was glossed over, and all credit went to their male colleagues. Recalling that time, Bartik once said, "I was just another ignored woman." Her words ring with so many other women who helped build the early tech world and never got the credit they had earned.

Grace Hopper: The Mother of Software

Another giant of early computing, Grace Hopper is another example of brilliance that will not be dimmed. The work of Hopper on the invention of the first compiler revolutionized the way humans interact with machines. This process was very tedious; before her invention, people had to program in machine code—one so time-consuming that it was inaccessible for practical use. Hopper's compiler bridged the gap, enabling programmers to write in more intuitive, human-readable languages.

That was the innovation that would eventually give way to COBOL, one of the earliest broadly adopted programming languages, and arguably helped democratize coding.

Yet, despite her monumental achievements, Hopper often found herself typecast as the "grandmotherly" figure of computing. This characterization, while affectionate, trivialized the intellectual rigor and foresight she brought to the field. Hopper herself recognized the biases she faced, famously quipping, “The most dangerous phrase in the language is, ‘We’ve always done it this way.’” Her resilience ensured her legacy would survive, but many of her contemporaries’ contributions were not as fortunate.

Silicon Valley's Forgotten Women: Ann Hardy and Adele Goldberg

Fast-forward through history to the early days of Silicon Valley, when this culture of startups started gaining inroads: women like Ann Hardy, a time-sharing systems pioneer, and Adele Goldberg, a major contributor to the Smalltalk programming language, were making silent planting in obscurity of works that would define our present character as human beings for modernity.

Goldberg's work on graphical user interfaces directly impacted the creation of Apple's Macintosh, yet the name rarely comes up alongside those of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

Equally understated are Alan Turing's and Bob Hardy's contributions. Time-sharing systems were revolutionary in computing—allowing multiple users to share the same machine—a forerunner of today's cloud computing. Hardy played no small part in shaping this paradigm, but it was consistently overshadowed because the leadership was dominated by the men who led the companies that she worked for. Therein lies her story within a larger trend: one of women doing transformative work behind the scenes, with their achievements being co-opted or otherwise forgotten all too often.

Why Were These Women Overlooked?

The erasure of women from the history of technology is deeply steeped in cultural biases. Through the mid-20th century, programming often was regarded as "women's work," similar to secretarial work. Once computing started gaining prestige, men quickly moved into the field and assumed leadership positions, to which they relegated women as their subordinates. The ENIAC programmers are but one good example of this process: though they were the ones making the machine run, they did not take center stage as the project was showcased before the public.

Startup culture in the late 20th century further perpetuated these dynamics. It celebrated risk-taking, entrepreneurship, and individualism—traits traditionally associated with masculinity. It denigrated collaborative and iterative contributions, often made by women, as secondary to the hero narratives of male founders. These biases persist today, with women in STEM fields still facing barriers to recognition, funding, and leadership opportunities.

The Cost of Forgotten Contributions

It is not only these women who have been erased; the very tech industry has suffered because of it. In sidelining diverse perspectives, the industry essentially limited its innovation potential. That collaborative spirit of those pioneers—Bartik, Hopper, Hardy, and Goldberg—is that inclusivity is a critical component to drive progress.

Today, this lost history is being reclaimed. Documentaries like Code: Debugging the Gender Gap and initiatives like the "ENIAC Programmers Project" make an attempt to shine the spotlight on those women who helped in shaping early technology. Organizations like Girls Who Code and Ada Developers Academy are trying to close the gender gap by empowering the next generation of female leaders in tech.

Rewriting the Narrative

Rewriting history, therefore, is not in any way to belittle the contributions of men; it only seeks to restore balance. The stories of Jean Jennings Bartik, Grace Hopper, Adele Goldberg, and countless others speak to the fact that innovation involves a collective effort. On their own recognitions, they are the ones to honor their legacy and pave the way for a future that will be more inclusive.

Remembering the forgotten women in early tech startups is more than just a matter of righting the wrongs of the past. It's also about inspiring a future generation to challenge the dominant narrative, appreciate diverse contributions, and create a tech world where every person has an equal opportunity to shape the future.