Lean Startup 101
Eugene Lee is an Entrepreneur In Residence at Artiman Ventures. He is a seasoned leader and entrepreneur with a track record of founding, building, growing and selling transformational companies at the intersection of people, software and networks. He is currently an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Artiman Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund, where he is investigating and incubating “white space” opportunities. Previously, he joined Socialtext as “CEO 2.0” and member of the Board of Directors in November 2007, leading the company’s growth to cash flow positive and SaaS profitability. Lee led the company to a successful exit in April 2012, when Socialtext was acquired by Bedford Funding, a $1.4 billion private equity firm.
After graduating from the MIT Sloan School of Business, Lee co-founded Beyond, Inc., the developer of the award-winning BeyondMail product. After Banyan Systems’ acquisition of Beyond, Lee was named General Manager of Messaging Business Unit, growing it from $5 million to $32 million in revenue in 18 months, and earned four patents in messaging, workflow and privacy technologies. He also launched Switchboard.com, the leading white and yellow pages directory.
Lee was recruited by Cisco Systems in 1997 as Vice President of Worldwide SMB Marketing, and then held the role of Vice President Marketing for Cisco’s Internet Communications Software Group, and eventually Vice President of Worldwide Enterprise Marketing. From 2004 to 2007 Lee was at Adobe Systems as Vice President of Product Marketing for the Intelligent Documents Business Unit and then as Vice President of Vertical and Solutions Marketing.
Lee is passionate about entrepreneurship and leadership, and actively advises and mentors several CEOs, startups, and non-profit organizations. He serves on the Board of Directors for EARN.org and for the Peninsula Symphony Orchestra.
Lee holds a B.A. in Physics and B.S. in Engineering and Computer Science from Harvard College, and a MBA from M.I.T Sloan School of Management. He is an accomplished pianist and a passionate chamber musician, voracious reader, budding photographer and foodie, and enthusiastic skier and golfer.