"It's easier for a female to start her own company than to move through the ranks of a big corporation. You don't have to ask anyone's permission in a start-up."

--Jessica Livingston, co-founder of early-stage start-up incubator, Y Combinator., quoted in a Mercury News story on how the number of women chief executives at Silicon Valley's biggest technology companies dropped to zero this week, with the departure of Diane Greene from VMWare.