Alfred Lin

Chairman, COO, Zappos.com (acquired by Amazon.com @ $1.2B)

Partner, SEQUOIA CAPITAL

Board Member: AirBnB, Kiwi, Houzz

Early investor in: AskJeeves, OpenTable

Alfred Lin is a financial expert, startup advisor, and Partner at Sequoia Capital. Alfred was the COO, CFO, and Chairman of Zappos.com until 2010. Alfred has the “Midas touch” with $2B in acquisitions “Influential People in Tech.” Alfred holds a B.A. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard and a M.S. in Statistics from Stanford.

While at Harvard, Alfred met Tony Hsieh, future CEO of Zappos. Hsieh first recognized Lin’s business acumen while running a student-owned pizza parlor at Harvard. Alfred, his best customer, was buying whole pizzas, splitting them into slices, and selling them for a profit. Dropped out of a Ph.D program at Stanford to join Tony Hsieh at LinkExchange as CFO. 18 months later LinkExchange was sold to Microsoft for $265 million.

Alfred then was a VP of Finance and Business Development of Tellme Networks (MSFT), which was also sold to Microsoft for $800m.

With Tony Hsieh he co-founded Venture Frogs-an incubator and investment firm. Venture Fogs invested in a variety of tech and Internet startups, including Ask Jeeves, OpenTable, Tellme Networks, and Zappos.

From 2005 to 2010 Alfred was an integral part of Zappos, taking the roles of Chairman, COO, and CFO. In 2009 Zappos was acquired by Amazon.com’s for $1.2 billion. Alfred left Zappos in 2010 to join Sequoia Capital as a partner.

Alfred 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). He specializes in consumer internet, enterprise and mobile.

Alfred currently sits on the board of directors at Airbnb, Achievers, Houzz, Humble Bundle, Stella & Dot, Kiwi, and Romotive and also works with Moovit and Trippy.

Alfred and his work have been profiled in national publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Harvard Business.