Jess Lee

Who they are

Jess Lee is a Partner at Sequoia Capital — co-founded Polyvore, the fashion discovery app acquired by Yahoo, and co-founded All Raise, the nonprofit that backs women founders and funders in tech.

Person

Jess Lee grew up in Hong Kong, attended Hong Kong International School, then earned a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford in 2004. Out of Stanford she joined Google as an Associate Product Manager — a product mind from the start. She left to co-found Polyvore in 2008, a shopping and styling discovery site that she built into a real business before it was acquired by Yahoo; she stayed post-acquisition as VP Product at Yahoo Lifestyle. In November 2016 she joined Sequoia Capital as an early-stage partner — notably the first female investing partner in the U.S. at the firm. She also co-founded All Raise in 2017, a nonprofit focused on improving representation of women founders and funders across tech. The through-line is product instinct applied at increasing scale: from building a consumer product to running it post-acquisition to evaluating founders doing the same thing from the other side of the table. Originally she wanted to be a graphic novelist, and she's an avid cosplayer — both speak to a sensibility about visual storytelling and user experience that runs through her career.

Company

Sequoia closed a $7 billion expansion fund in April 2026 — its largest late-stage vehicle yet, nearly doubling the $3.4 billion fund it raised in 2022, and the first fund raised under new co-stewards Alfred Lin and Pat Grady, who succeeded Roelof Botha in November 2025. Doug Leone returned as Chairman in April 2026 alongside that leadership transition. The new fund targets late-stage AI investments in the U.S. and Europe, with an emphasis on high-compute infrastructure. Separately, Sequoia also launched $950 million in new seed and venture funds for early-stage startups. On the portfolio side, Sequoia joined Anthropic's $25 billion funding round at a reported $350 billion valuation in 2026, and backed Ineffable Intelligence's $1.1 billion seed round at a $5.1 billion valuation in April 2026.

Market

Sequoia competes for the best early- and late-stage deals against a16z, Accel, General Catalyst, Founders Fund, Lightspeed, Bessemer, Index, NEA, and Khosla Ventures, among others. The firm's defining strategic bet right now is AI infrastructure and foundation models — it holds positions in both OpenAI and Anthropic simultaneously, an unusually concentrated dual bet on competing frontier labs. Geopolitical pressure led Sequoia to split into three independent entities in 2023 — Sequoia Capital (U.S./Europe), HongShan (China), and Peak XV Partners (India/Southeast Asia) — simplifying regulatory and brand complexity while allowing each entity to operate independently.

Network

Jess works closely with Alfred Lin and Pat Grady, who became co-stewards of Sequoia in November 2025, and operates within a firm whose senior bench includes Doug Leone, who returned as Chairman in April 2026. No direct edges to named portfolio founders or outside collaborators are available from the claims, but her co-founding of All Raise in 2017 puts her in sustained contact with a wide network of women investors and operators across the industry.

Alfred Lin· Co-steward (Managing Partner), Sequoia Capital
Pat Grady· Co-steward (Managing Partner), Sequoia Capital
Doug Leone· Chairman, Sequoia Capital

How they likely show up

Started as a product manager at Google and co-founded Polyvore → she evaluates founders through a builder's lens, not just a pattern-matching investor's lens.
Joined Sequoia in 2016 as the first female investing partner in the U.S. at the firm → she's comfortable being a first and operating in high-visibility, high-stakes environments.
Co-founded All Raise in 2017 alongside her investing role → high agency; she doesn't wait for institutions to fix structural problems, she builds parallel structures.
Investor role type combined with a consumer product and operational background → likely probes for product depth and user empathy in founders, not just market size.
Possibly — her background wanting to be a graphic novelist and active cosplay practice suggest she responds to founders who can articulate a vivid, specific vision rather than a slide-deck abstraction.
Spoke publicly at events as early as 2010 (Polyvore Girl Geek Dinner) → comfortable being visible and on record; not a behind-the-scenes-only operator.

Conversation tips

→ Reference Polyvore specifically — she built and ran it, not just founded it, and the product decisions she made there are likely formative to how she thinks about consumer experience today.
→ All Raise is a genuine passion project she stood up herself; asking what's changed in the landscape for women founders since 2017 will get a substantive answer.
→ She thinks about product quality at a founder level — come with a specific product opinion or user insight, not just a market thesis.
→ Don't treat her primarily as a 'diversity and inclusion' voice; she's a product operator and investor first, and flattening her to that framing will land poorly.
→ If you're a founder, expect her to probe how well you actually know your user — her background is in consumer discovery products where taste and empathy are load-bearing.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on Polyvore's origin story — she joined as an early employee, then became CEO and co-founder, building a fashion discovery product that Yahoo eventually acquired. That arc from PM to founder to acqui-hire survivor is unusually complete and she rarely gets asked about what the post-acquisition stretch at Yahoo Lifestyle actually taught her.
Reference All Raise — she co-founded it in 2017 alongside her investing role at Sequoia, a nonprofit she built from scratch to move the needle on representation. It's a signal about how she operates when she sees a structural problem.
Bring up Sequoia's $7 billion April 2026 fund and its explicit focus on AI infrastructure — it's the firm's largest late-stage vehicle, raised under a new leadership structure, and she's inside it as an early-stage partner. There's a real tension worth exploring between early-stage conviction and late-stage capital concentration.

Discovery questions

Polyvore was a consumer discovery product built around taste and curation — how much of that product thinking shapes what you look for in founders today versus what you've had to unlearn in a B2B or infrastructure world?
All Raise has been running since 2017 — nearly a decade in. What's actually moved in the numbers for women founders and funders, and what's proven stubbornly resistant?
Sequoia is now simultaneously backing multiple competing frontier AI labs. From an early-stage investing perspective, how do you think about finding the next foundational bet when the fund is already deeply committed at the infrastructure layer?

Avoid

Don't lead with generic questions about 'what it's like to be a woman in VC' — she's built companies, run products, and co-founded a nonprofit specifically to address that structural question; she'll engage much more readily with product, founder quality, or specific portfolio dynamics.

Make it yours