Aileen Lee (born 1970) is a U.S.

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

angel investor An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital for a business or businesses start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or owners ...

and co-founder of Cowboy Ventures. Lee coined the often-used Silicon Valley term

unicorn The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead. In European literature and art, the unicorn has for the last thousand years o ...

in a ''

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately ...

'' article "Welcome To The Unicorn Club: Learning from Billion-Dollar Startups" as profiled in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. A unicorn is generally defined as a privately held startup that has a $1 billion valuation or more – something rare (like a unicorn).

Education

Lee earned her bachelor's degree from the

MIT Sloan School of Management The MIT Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan or Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs, ...

in 1992. After MIT, she worked as a financial analyst for two years at

Morgan Stanley Morgan Stanley is an American multinational investment management and financial services company headquartered at 1585 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. With offices in more than 41 countries and more than 75,000 employees, the fir ...

. She earned her MBA from

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

in 1997.

Career

Lee joined

Kleiner Perkins Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneurs ...

(KPCB) in 1999 and was the founding CEO of

RMG Networks RMG Networks, formerly Symon Communications, is a digital signage company headquartered in Texas. RMG is headquartered in Dallas with offices in the United States and United Kingdom. History 1980 – 2013 Early Symon Years Reach Media Group ...

, a company backed by KPCB. Lee worked at Kleiner Perkins for 13 years and left in 2012. In 2012, she left KPCB to start seed-stage venture firm Cowboy Ventures. In 2017, Lee added Ted Wang to the firm as a general partner. Cowboy Ventures is one of the first female-led venture capital firms. Over the past six years, Cowboy Ventures has received three large funds, the most recent reaching $95 million. Through Cowboy Ventures, Lee has made investments in many early-stage companies, including August,

Dollar Shave Club Dollar Shave Club is an American company based in Venice, California, that delivers razors and other personal grooming products to customers by mail. It delivers razor blades on a monthly basis and offers additional grooming products for home del ...

, Textio, Accompany and

Tally Technologies Tally Technologies, Inc. (or simply Tally) is a San Francisco, California-based American financial services company founded by Jason Brown and Jasper Platz in 2015. The company's smartphone app helps its users pay down their credit card debt, ...

. She is a public advocate of increasing the number of female founders and investors in the Silicon Valley.

Philanthropy

In 2018, Lee co-founded All Raise, a nonprofit organization which seeks to increase the amount of funding that female investors receive. The organization was founded as a collective by more than 30 venture capitalists who advocate for increasing the presence of women in venture capital. Lee described the organization's importance in saying “We believe that by improving the success of women in the venture-backed tech ecosystem, we can build a more accessible community that reflects the diversity of the world around us.”

Awards and recognition

Lee was invited to speak at the 2018 Code Conference put on by

Recode ''Recode'' (formerly ''Re/code'') is a technology news website that focused on the business of Silicon Valley. Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher founded it in January 2014, after they left Dow Jones and the similar website they had previously c ...

and additionally at the 2018

GeekWire GeekWire is an American technology news website that covers startups and established technology companies. The site launched in March 2011 and is based in Seattle. It was founded by journalists Todd Bishop and John Cook with investment from Jona ...

Summit. She also spoke at the 2019 Silicon Slopes Tech Summit. and is recognized as a speaker for the organization Lesbians Who Tech and the Female Founders Conference. Lee has appeared on ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...

list of

The World's 100 Most Powerful Women Since 2004, the American business magazine ''Forbes'' compiled an annual list of the 100 most powerful women in the world. It is edited by notable ''Forbes'' journalists, including Moira Forbes, and is based on visibility and economic impact. Fo ...

(position #97 as of 2020) and the Midas List in 2020 (position #80), 2019 (position #82), and 2018 (position #97). She also appeared on ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

's'' list of 100 Most Influential People in 2019.

Personal life

Lee grew up in

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

and is the daughter of Chinese immigrants. Aileen Lee is married.

References

External links

Cowboy Ventures
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lee, Aileen Kleiner Perkins people Living people American venture capitalists American women investors American chief executives of financial services companies American women chief executives American women company founders American company founders MIT Sloan School of Management alumni Harvard Business School alumni Angel investors 1970 births American people of Chinese descent Henry Crown Fellows 21st-century American businesswomen 21st-century American businesspeople