Alfred Lin

Alfred Lin
Born	Taiwan[1]
Alma mater	Harvard University(B.A) Stanford University(M.S.)
Occupation	Partner at Sequoia Capital

Alfred Lin is an American venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital.^[2][3][4] Lin was the COO, CFO, and Chairman of Zappos.com until 2010.^[5][6]

Early Career & Zappos

Lin holds a B.A. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard and a M.S. in Statistics from Stanford.^[7] While at Harvard, Lin met Tony Hsieh, the future CEO of Zappos.^[8] Hsieh first recognized Lin's business acumen while running a student-owned pizza parlor at Harvard. Lin, his best customer, was buying whole pizzas, splitting them into slices, and selling them for a profit.^[8] In 1996, Lin dropped out of a Ph.D program at Stanford to join Hsieh at LinkExchange as CFO.^[2] 18 months later LinkExchange sold to Microsoft for $265 million.^[9] Later, before joining Zappos, Lin was the VP of Finance and Business Development of Tellme Networks (MSFT). With Tony Hsieh he also co-founded Venture Frogs, an incubator and investment firm.^[10] Venture Fogs invested in a variety of tech and Internet startups, including Ask Jeeves, OpenTable, Tellme Networks, and Zappos.^[11][11]

From 2005 to 2010 Lin was an integral part of Zappos, taking the roles of Chairman, COO, and CFO.^[7] At Zappos Lin was "No. 2 in command", responsible for all financial, administrative, and warehouse operations.^[12] He was also responsible for company growth and scaling, bringing the company to its first profitable year in 2006 and to Amazon.com's acquisition of the company in 2009 for $1.2 billion.^{[3][13][14][15]} According to TechCrunch, "Hsieh made at least $214 million; Lin made at least $18 million, with the Venture Frogs shares netting an additional $163 million."^[16]

Lin left Zappos in 2010 to join the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital as a partner.^[17]

Sequoia Capital & Investments

TechCrunch has stated that Alfred has the "Midas touch", since "every company he’s worked for has been acquired, and the smallest deal was $265 million."^[2] Lin's $265 million deal happened at LinkExchange, which was sold to Microsoft for $265M when he was VP of Finance and Administration and was the first company he ever joined.^[18] Lin later helped Tellme Networks which was sold to Microsoft for $800 million.^[19] After that, Lin helped from Zappos to later be acquired by Amazon for $1.2 billion. Lin has invested in Airbnb, Achievers, Stella & Dot, Houzz, Humble Bundle, Kiwi, Romotive, Moovit, Styleseat, Uber, and Cardpool (acquired by Blackhawk Networks), AppBistro / MMTG Labs (acquired by InMobi), and SalesCrunch (acquired by ClearSlide.^[20][21] He specializes in consumer internet, enterprise and mobile companies.^[22]

Lin currently sits on the board of directors at Airbnb, Achievers, FutureAdvisor, Houzz, Humble Bundle, Stella & Dot, Kiwi, and Romotive and also works with Moovit and Trippy.^[23][24]

Influence

In 2013, Forbes named Lin as one of the "30 Most Influential People in Tech."^[25] Lin and his work have been profiled in national publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, CNBC, Forbes, BusinessWeek, and Fortune Magazine.^{[4][26][27][28]}

References

External links

• Sequoia Capital profile
• Crunchbase profile
• Twitter profile

Private equity and venture capital investors Investment strategy Buyout Venture Growth Mezzanine Secondaries History History of private equity and venture capital Early history of private equity Private equity in the 1980s Private equity in the 1990s Private equity in the 2000s Investor types Private equity investors Venture capitalists Corporate raiders