Aileen Lee is a U.S. seed investor. A venture capital investor, she is the founder of Cowboy Ventures. 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.
Lee joined Kleiner Perkinsin 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. 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, Accompany and Tally Technologies. 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 and additionally at the 2018 GeekWire 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' list ofThe World's 100 Most Powerful Women and its The Top Women Investors On Midas In 2018 list, and on the Times list of 100 Most Influential People in 2019.
