Overview

Gender

male

Investor Type

Investment Partner

William Lee is a Co-Founder & Managing Director of Pilot Growth Equity and is based in San Francisco. Will has been creating software for 32 years and investing in technology companies for 22 years. He is a visionary technology entrepreneur, operator, systems architect, and investor. Will currently serves on the boards of r4, Tailwind, Velocidi and Webgility, and was on the board of Zenedge (acquired by Oracle). His other active investments in the fund include CB Insights, Metabiota and Perthera. His previous investments include Counsyl (acquired by Myriad), CUJO (acquired by Comcast), FirstBest Systems (acquired by Guidewire) and PMC.

Will began his career at Motorola, where he led the development of mobile-based operating systems. Will was then a Co-Founder & CTO of The Theory Center, where he was the visionary and architect behind the company's Enterprise JavaBeans products. The Theory Center was a bootstrapped enterprise software company that was acquired by BEA Systems. Will stayed on at BEA as Senior Director of Technology in the WebLogic eCommerce Applications Group. He led and executed the group's technology sales strategies for worldwide markets. He was awarded 2 US patents on enterprise software.

In 2000, Will served as a Co-Founder & Managing Director of NextStage LLC, a private investment firm. He brought together a network of entrepreneurs and investors with a focus on building technology companies. He seed funded and was a Co-Founder of FirstBest Systems in 2006 (acquired by Guidewire), where he initially lead Business Development, responsible for corporate strategy, finance, and business partnerships.

Will holds a Bachelor with University Honors and Research Honors from Carnegie Mellon in Math / Computer Science, and Computer Engineering. He also earned a Master's in Computer Science from Cornell as a Motorola Fellowship recipient.

Will is an avid sailor and has captained in the North Sea, Mediterranean, Adriatic Sea, Caribbean, Atlantic, Sea of Cortez, South Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, and Andaman Sea.