Aileen Lee

Aileen Lee (born 1970) is a U.S. venture capital angel investor and co-founder of Cowboy Ventures.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]

Lee coined the often-used Silicon Valley term unicorn in a TechCrunch article "Welcome To The Unicorn Club: Learning from Billion-Dollar Startups" as profiled in The New York Times. A unicorn is generally defined as a privately held startup that has a $1 billion valuation or more – something rare (like a unicorn).[10]

Education

Raised in Millburn, New Jersey, Lee graduated in 1988 from Millburn High School, where she was senior class president.[11]

Lee earned her bachelor's degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1992. After MIT, she worked as a financial analyst for two years at Morgan Stanley.[12] She earned her MBA from Harvard Business School in 1997.[1]

Career

Lee joined Kleiner Perkins (KPCB) in 1999 and was the founding CEO of RMG Networks, a company backed by KPCB. Lee worked at Kleiner Perkins for 13 years and left in 2012.[13]

In 2012, she left KPCB to start seed-stage venture firm Cowboy Ventures.[14] In 2017, Lee added Ted Wang to the firm as a general partner.[15]

Cowboy Ventures is one of the first female-led venture capital firms.[16] In its first six years, Cowboy Ventures has received three large funds, the latest reaching $95 million.[17][18]

Through Cowboy Ventures, Lee has made investments in many early-stage companies, including August,[19] Dollar Shave Club,[19] Textio,[20] Accompany[14] and Tally Technologies.[21][22][23] She is a public advocate of increasing the number of female founders and investors in the Silicon Valley.[24]

Philanthropy

In 2018, Lee co-founded All Raise, a nonprofit organization which seeks to increase the amount of funding that female investors receive.[18] The organization was founded as a collective by more than 30 venture capitalists who advocate for increasing the presence of women in venture capital.[25] 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.”[26]

Awards and recognition

Lee was invited to speak at the 2018 Code Conference put on by Recode and additionally at the 2018 GeekWire Summit.[27][28] She also spoke at the 2019 Silicon Slopes Tech Summit.[29] and is recognized as a speaker for the organization Lesbians Who Tech and the Female Founders Conference.[30][31]

Lee has appeared on Forbes' list of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women (position #97 as of 2020)[32] and the Midas List in 2020 (position #80),[33] 2019 (position #82),[34] and 2018 (position #97).[35] She also appeared on Time's list of 100 Most Influential People in 2019.[36]

Personal life

Lee grew up in New Jersey and is the daughter of Chinese immigrants.[12] Aileen Lee is married.[37]

External links

• Cowboy Ventures