Every order gets 1 ticket to the Exclusive Virtual Launch Party!
 
Silicon Valley is not the glossy utopia our promising youth has been sold; it’s a modern-day Colosseum where overclocked misfits battle for their shot at unicorn status and glory. 
 
Forget the embroidered zip hoodies and free kombucha fantasies—in Tech Confidential, two renegade insiders cut through the buzzwords and bullsh*t. They show that your dreams of changing the world are possible, but success has a high price and the person you were before may not like the person you become. 
 
This book dishes out hard-earned strategies to help you not just survive but thrive in a world that chews people up and spits them out in the name of “innovation.”
 
Inside these pages, you’ll meet brilliant oddballs racing to launch the next big product, engineers treating the next line of code as their personal Everest, and leaders juggling corporate politics while one breath away from the company’s last gasp. Along the way, the authors deliver sharp, painfully relatable anecdotes and practical strategies that show you how to:
Tame your ego to navigate corporate politics like a pro
Embrace the misfits and survive toxic colleagues
Moneyball the market to build products people want
Get money or get out
 
Packed with insights, humor, and hard-won hope, this essential guide is for anyone daring to dream big in the tech world—and still wanting a life left to enjoy.
 
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
 
DENISE KOESSLER GOSNELL has been connecting dots since she was seven, when she turned her family’s RV into a matrix of homemade tic-tac-toe grids. Now a Principal Product Manager at AWS, she’s a leader in graph technology, shaping how we use data to understand human behavior and power decisions. With a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Tennessee (where she coined the concept of “social fingerprinting”), Denise has built some of the largest graph applications in the world, authored The Practitioner’s Guide to Graph Data, and led groundbreaking teams at DataStax and Amazon. She’s also the founder of Systers at U. of Tennessee, a mentorship network for women in tech, and a relentless advocate for diverse perspectives in engineering. Whether uncovering patterns in Big Data or mentoring the next generation of innovators, Denise proves that thinking differently can change everything.

KATHRYN ERICKSON is a seasoned strategist with two decades of experience driving growth and innovation across technology startups and established organizations. She has led strategy pivots, secured funding, guided acquisitions, and facilitated cultural transformations. Her career includes roles at the FBI, National Science Foundation, and MITRE—experiences that ignited her passion for innovation and propelled her into the tech startup and Open Source ecosystems. Kathryn holds a B.S. in Software Engineering from the University of Southern Mississippi and an M.S. in Security Informatics from Johns Hopkins University. Originally from Mississippi, she now resides in Virginia, where she enjoys rockhounding, painting, and spending time with her family.