Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Lerer Hippeau · Joined 2010
View Live Interactive Profile →Ben Lerer spent more than a decade simultaneously running a high-growth media company - first Thrillist, which he founded, then Group Nine Media after Thrillist's merger - while co-founding and building Lerer Hippeau alongside Eric Hippeau in 2010. That dual operator-investor experience shaped a distinctly hands-on, 'activist' seed investing philosophy: Lerer Hippeau takes meaningful stakes and works directly on branding and strategy with portfolio companies, rather than writing passive checks. Lerer has described his own investment philosophy as deliberately contrarian - he wants Lerer Hippeau's portfolio to include companies whose best-case outcome is a genuine power-law winner, not just a safe, sensible business - and that approach produced early bets on Warby Parker, Casper, Glossier, and Allbirds before any of them were obvious winners. He has grown the firm across nine funds and nearly $1.5 billion in AUM, making it one of New York's most influential early-stage venture firms.