Alfred Lin | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1972 (age 52–53) |
| Education | Harvard University (BA) Stanford University (MS) |
| Occupation | Partner at Sequoia Capital |
| Spouse | Rebecca Lin |
| Children | Atticus Lin (Son) |
Alfred Lin (born 1972) is a Taiwanese-American venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital. [2] [3] [4] Lin was the COO, CFO, and Chairman of Zappos.com until 2010. [5] [6]
Lin was born in Taiwan. When he was at the age of six or seven, his parents immigrated to the New York area. [7] Lin attended the Stuyvesant High School in New York City.[ citation needed ] He holds a B.A. in applied mathematics from Harvard and a M.S. in statistics from Stanford.[ citation needed ] While at Harvard, Lin met Tony Hsieh, the future CEO of Zappos. [7] Hsieh first recognized Lin's business acumen while running a student-owned pizza parlor at Harvard. Lin, his best customer, was buying whole pizzas, splitting them into slices, and selling them for a profit. [7] In 1996, Lin dropped out of a Ph.D. program at Stanford to join Hsieh, Sanjay Mandan, and Ali Partovi at LinkExchange as CFO. [2] 18 months later LinkExchange sold to Microsoft for $265 million. [8] Later, before joining Zappos, Lin was the VP of Finance and Business Development of Tellme Networks (MSFT). With Tony Hsieh he also co-founded Venture Frogs, an incubator and investment firm. [9] Venture Frogs invested in a variety of tech and Internet startups, including Ask Jeeves, OpenTable, Tellme Networks, and Zappos. [10]
From 2005 to 2010, Lin was chairman, COO, and CFO.[ citation needed ] At Zappos, Lin was responsible for all financial, administrative, and warehouse operations. [11] He was also responsible for company growth and scaling, bringing the company to its first profitable year in 2006 and to Amazon.com's acquisition of the company in 2009 for $1.2 billion. [3] [12] [13] [14] According to TechCrunch , "Hsieh made at least $214 million; Lin made at least $18 million, with the Venture Frogs shares netting an additional $163 million." [15]
Lin left Zappos in 2010 to join the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital as a partner. [16]
TechCrunch has stated that Alfred has the "Midas touch", since "every company he's worked for has been acquired, and the smallest deal was $265 million." [2] Lin later helped Tellme Networks which was sold to Microsoft for $800 million. [17] After that, Lin helped form Zappos to later be acquired by Amazon for $1.2 billion. Lin has invested in Airbnb, Achievers, Stella & Dot, Houzz, Humble Bundle, Kiwi, Romotive, Moovit, Styleseat, Uber, and Cardpool (acquired by Blackhawk Networks), AppBistro / MMTG Labs (acquired by InMobi), and SalesCrunch (acquired by ClearSlide). [18] [19] [20] He specializes in consumer internet, enterprise and mobile companies. [21]
Lin was an early investor in Zipline, a medicine drone delivery company with operations in Rwanda. [22] He also invested in the Palo Alto-based security company Cobalt Robotics, and sits on its board of directors. [23] In 2021, Lin made a failed investment on FTX and represented Sequoia on its advisory board. [24] [25] [26]
In 2013, Forbes named Lin as one of the "30 Most Influential People in Tech". [27] Lin and his work have been profiled in national publications, including The Wall Street Journal , The New York Times , Harvard Business Review , Forbes, BusinessWeek , and Fortune , as well as CNBC. [4] [28] [29] [30]