Jess Lee (born 1982) is an American venture capitalist. She is a partner at Sequoia Capital [1] and the former chief executive officer of Polyvore. [2] [3]
Jess Lee (born 1982) is an American venture capitalist. She is a partner at Sequoia Capital [1] and the former chief executive officer of Polyvore. [2] [3]
Lee lived in Hong Kong until the age of 17, when she graduated from Hong Kong International School, then moved to California to pursue a bachelor's degree in computer science at Stanford University, [4] though she had initially been interested in attending art school. [5]
In 2004, Lee was recruited into Google's associate product manager (APM) program, [4] [6] which had been founded and was then still led by Marissa Mayer. [7] Lee started work on Google's shopping engine Froogle [6] before becoming product manager of Google Maps. [4] There she worked with a team of five engineers to create My Maps, a project that allowed users to create maps of their own. [6]
She joined Polyvore as a product manager in 2008 after providing co-founder Pasha Sadri with feedback on issues with the website. [8] Lee initially wrote code for Polyvore but later started to handle social media, hiring, and finding new locations for the office. [4] Her role expanded to honorary co-founder in 2010 and she was promoted to CEO in 2012. [6] Lee then guided the company to cut down on features such as the "Ask" section and opened another office in New York City. [6]
In 2016, she joined Sequoia Capital as an investing partner, [9] becoming its first female partner in the United States in 44 years of operation. [10] Hired at age 33, Lee became one of Sequoia's youngest partners. [11]
She currently resides in Mountain View, California. [4]