Howard Lee

MANAGING DIRECTOR
Howard

"We are very experienced in the secondary process and work as efficiently as possible with management teams and companies."

Howard is a Founder and Managing Director of Founders Equity Partners. Howard has more than twenty years of experience in venture capital and private equity investing in Silicon Valley, and more than a decade of experience in research, development, and marketing in emerging and established technology companies and research institutions. Howard brings this extensive primary investment experience as an early stage/growth stage investor in venture capital to direct secondary investments at Founders Equity Partners. As a board member of many startups, he has worked closely with entrepreneurs, founders, and other venture firms. This combination of primary and secondary investments allows Howard to provide trusted value to entrepreneurs and founders as they manage partial liquidity needs at their companies. His most recent secondary investments have included Palantir, Lyft, Cylance, SpaceX, and AlienVault.

Previously, he was Co-Head for US Private Equity at CDIB Capital, the private equity arm of CDIB, the largest industrial bank in Taiwan. Prior to CDIB Capital, Howard was a General Partner at Crystal Ventures, a venture capital firm that focused on early-stage infrastructure and enabling technology companies in both the US and Asia, where he led communications-related investments. Howard was also a Vice President of the global venture capital firm Crimson Ventures. Prior to Crimson, he was Vice President and Co-Founder of Volendam Capital Advisors, a venture fund that invests in emerging growth high technology companies in the US and Europe. Howard has held management positions in product management and marketing at Applied Materials and has worked as a research investigator in optoelectronics and semiconductor materials at the US Army Research Labs. He has also held engineering positions at IBM and Unisys. He currently serves as an advisor and mentor to several Silicon Valley organizations including the Entrepreneurship course at the University of California at Berkeley.

Howard holds a BS (Highest Honors) in Electrical Engineering, a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Electro-Optics from Cornell University, and an MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France.