Aileen Lee
Founder and Managing Partner, Cowboy Ventures. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounderoperator@aileenlee ↗cowboy.vc ↗Wikipedia ↗
In 2013, she coined the term unicorn to describe private venture-backed startups valued at $1 billion or more, and later co-founded All Raise. Prior to launching seed-stage firm Cowboy Ventures in 2012, she spent more than a decade at Kleiner Perkins and backed companies including Dollar Shave Club.
2shows
2appearances
19statements
5resolved
5supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
10said about them ↓ Everything Aileen Lee said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Lee: VC Board Member Withheld Tough Feedback to Protect LP Fundraise
“I called the board member, and I was like, hey, what's your feeling about how this, like, what kind of coaching are you giving the team about how things are going? It feels like things are off, and we are not doing the things we should be doing. And he was lik…”
Lee: Series A valuations will reset to $20M-$40M pre-money
“Well, Series A's we're going to be back to eight to twelve million dollars, and Series A valuations will be back to 20 to 35, 40 pre. And B's will be back to a hundred pre, instead of four or 500 pre.”
Lee: Mega-funds give junior VCs $2M-$4M checkbooks as training wheels
“There's a lot of, like, basically, as these funds got bigger, they had more fee income. And so they could feed more mouths. And they would hire younger people and say, you have a checkbook. Like, you don't have a big checkbook like I have. Like, you know, the …”
Lee: Founders Raising in 2022 Market Will Face VC Bottom Fishers
“And so, like, if you raise now, if you can avoid it, you're gonna be getting a lot of bottom fissures.”
Lee: VCs are privately stressed over portfolio companies with unsustainable valuations
“A lot of people are sitting on super overvalued investments. And depending on what price they paid and what's in their portfolio, they are super stressed out right now because they don't see a path for their portfolio companies or a chunk of their portfolio co…”
Lee: Seed founders pitch $6M rounds but quickly reduce asks to $3M
“Right now we're seeing a lot of seed extensions. We're seeing a lot of seed founders who are sending us decks that have a six million dollar seed raise in them. And I'll email the founder and be like, Hey, this looks really interesting. Are you still thinking …”
Lee: LPs Have Put on the Brakes for Venture Funds Raising
“Investors, LPs in venture funds have basically put on the brakes. And so any fund that is trying to raise right now is having a pretty hard time for the most part.”
Lee: Downturn Years Are Historically the Best Times to Found Unicorns
“When we did the original unicorn analysis, we looked at kind of vintage birth years, and like what were the best years to start or found a unicorn, and generally downturn Years are the best years.”
Lee: Sequoia Redesigned Fund Structure After Realizing Selling Early Sacrificed Returns
“Well, that's, I mean, that's why Sequoia went to this new fund structure, is because they did the analysis, and they showed that by selling too early, they had left a lot on the table.”
Lee: Path to Profitability Conversations Only Start Post-Series B
“I think like once you're past post-series B, that's when you're having the conversation about at your board, with your board and then your investors about path to profitability, I would say.”
Lee: Series A Startups Now Need $5M to $10M Revenue Before Series B
“And then A is really like, you know, can you get from, you know, let's say you know, from post seed, let's say if you're at a million and a half or two million dollars when you raise your A, then you probably need to get to between five and 10 in revenue durin…”
Lee: Kleiner Perkins held zero LP meetings across 12 years
“We never had an LP meeting in the 12 years that I was there”
Lee: Self-serve PLG startups can afford longer pre-revenue development than sales-led
“If you don't, if you can have self-serve and you don't have to spend any money on AEs or customer acquisition, then you can spend a lot of time building the product and then it'll fly off the shelves. If you have a product that has to be sold, it's a lot harde…”
Lee: Original unicorn analysis showed most founders were serial entrepreneurs
“One of the things that most, like, the, in the original unicorn analysis, the, one of the things that most of the founders had in common is they were serial entrepreneurs.”
Aileen Lee: Female consumer tech founders have grown significantly since 1999
“So, I do think there are a lot more female founder CEOs than there were when I started in 99, especially in the consumer side.”
Lee: Cowboy Ventures May Never Grow Beyond 3 to 4 People
“It may never be more than three or four people but I think it will always be, like, very hands-on and personal and also very collaborative.”
Lee: Series A and B VCs rarely co-invest due to ownership targets
“Like, what I think, one of the things that Theresa and I are super excited about is, like, we've been friends basically since I started, and we've never been able to co-invest, because when you're a Series A or Series B investor, You want to, from our firms, y…”
Lee: Mid-2000s angel investors co-invested at $3M to $4M pre-money valuations
“The seed thing was happening in like the mid 2000, like, oh five, oh six, that's when we really should have started, by the way. And angel investors were getting in at three pre, four pre, and they were all co-investing”
The other half of the tape: Aileen Lee's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 9 times in 6 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Jason Lemkin 7Elliott Robinson 1
Statements about Aileen Lee, by other people (1)
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
the Official SaaStr Podcast 9
2024 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2022 2 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Aileen's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SAASTRLEDGER | Founder and Managing Partner, Cowboy Ventures | 1 | 16 | 100% 5/5 | full record on the Official SaaStr Podcast → |
 a16zLEDGER | Founder and Managing Partner, Cowboy Ventures | 1 | 3 | — | full record on the a16z Podcast → |