to companies with a female founder from 15%
to 25% within five years. AllRaise says it’s arranged
20 introductions between startups and investors
that led to around 50 checks for startups, two of
them funded by Lee.
Raised in Hong Kong, Lee studied computer
science at Stanford, then worked at Google. In
2008 she joined Polyvore, a media startup focused
on fashion, eventually becoming chief execu-
tive officer in 2012. “It would have been a differ-
ent company, and most likely not as successful”
without Lee, says Polyvore co-founder Jianing Hu.
Colleagues admired Lee for the lengths she went
to in recruiting. She once answered an engineer’s
comment that he was “on the fence” about join-
ing Polyvore with a gift of a chain-link fence from
Home Depot. “I’m a big fan of the over-the-top
close,” she says. Yahoo! bought Polyvore in 2015
for $230 million.
Shortly after Verizon Communications Inc.
announced it was acquiring Yahoo in 2016, Lee
agreed to meet Jim Goetz, the Sequoia partner
who’d backed messaging service WhatsApp, at a
Mountain View cafe. When she showed up, she
tried not to stare at two customers at a nearby
table dressed head-to-toe as characters from
Toy Story. After a few minutes, Woody and Buzz
Lightyear held up a watercolor of the cowgirl
character, Jess, and other toys from the movie.
Words beneath read: “Will you join US on a new
VENTURE?” The toys then removed their head-
pieces: Woody was Goetz; Buzz was Roelof Botha,
who’d backed Instagram and payment company
Square. Lee, a cosplay aficionado, was impressed,
and charmed by the idea that she’d found kindred
spirits. “It meant that I could bring my whole self ”
to work, she says.
That doesn’t mean Lee will succeed. It’ll be
hard to tell for at least another two years how
much promise her companies show and how
much credit she’s due. For now, she’s making
progress in other ways. During a recent San
Francisco party of startup founders and investors,
she deftly broke into a mostly male cluster of older
guests. With a beer in hand and a twentysome-
thing female founder in tow, Lee unapologetically
steered the conversation to talk up the woman’s
accomplishments. Sure the conversation was on
track, she excused herself. Then, instead of opt-
ing for the restroom and her email, she headed
back into the crowd. �Sarah McBride and
Lizette Chapman22
THE BOTTOM LINE Jess Lee has built a strong early record of
investments at Sequoia but still faces discrimination from peers and
startup founders in ways that are both subtle and obvious.Climate Changed
The empress holds
the Guinness World
Records mark for
fastest growth; it
reaches maturity
in 7 to 10 years, vs.
several decades for
a pine or oak tree