Aileen Lee

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 with a $1 billion valuation or more – something rare (like a unicorn).

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. She earned her MBA from Harvard Business School in 1997. Lee joined Kleiner Perkins 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.

In 2012, she left KPCB to start the 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 significant funds, the most recently reaching $95 million. Through Cowboy Ventures, Lee has invested in many early-stage companies, including August, Dollar Shave Club, Textio, Accompany, and Tally Technologies. In addition, she is a public advocate for increasing the number of female founders and investors in Silicon Valley.

In 2018, Lee co-founded All Raise, a nonprofit organization seeking to increase the female funding investors receive. The organization was founded as a collective by more than 30 venture capitalists who advocate for expanding the presence of women in venture capital. Lee described the organization's importance: "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."

Lee was invited to speak at the 2018 Code Conference by Recode and the 2018 GeekWire Summit. She also spoke at the 2019 Silicon Slopes Tech Summit. In addition, she is recognized as a speaker for the organization Lesbians Who Tech and the Female Founders Conference. Lee has appeared on Forbes' list of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women (position #97 as of 2020) and the Midas List in 2020 and 2018. She also appeared on Time's 100 Most Influential People list in 2019.