David Lee

Head of Samsung NEXT & EVP, Samsung Electronics at Samsung NEXT · Joined 2018

Biography

David Lee's path to running Samsung NEXT ran through corporate law, Google, and some of Silicon Valley's most consequential seed bets. After a Stanford electrical engineering degree and an NYU law degree, he worked as a corporate attorney before moving into business development at StumbleUpon and then joining Google's New Business Development team at its founding. He co-founded SV Angel in 2009, where seed checks into Airbnb, Twitter, Dropbox, Pinterest, Snap, Stripe, DoorDash, and Instacart built one of the most recognizable angel track records of that era. A stage-four lymphoma diagnosis in the 1990s shaped a lasting focus on health and wellness investing, which led him to co-found and chair Refactor Capital, a seed fund dedicated to health and biology, before taking the helm at Samsung NEXT. He now runs Samsung's global startup investing arm despite not speaking Korean, bringing a distinctly Western venture sensibility to one of Asia's largest corporate investors.

Education

• BA, Johns Hopkins University
• MS, Electrical Engineering, Stanford University (NSF Graduate Fellow)
• JD, New York University School of Law

Previous Experience

• Corporate Attorney, technology law firms
• Business Development, StumbleUpon (acquired by eBay)
• Founding member, Google New Business Development team
• Investor, Baseline Ventures
• Co-Founder, SV Angel (backed Airbnb, Twitter, Dropbox, Pinterest, Stripe, DoorDash, Snap, Instacart)
• Co-Founder & Chairman, Refactor Capital

Notable Investments

Career Timeline

Sources & References