Alfred Lin

Alfred Lin (Chinese: 林君叡; born 1972) is a Taiwanese-American venture capitalist who has served as the managing partner of Sequoia Capital since 2025.^[2][3] He joined Sequoia in 2010 as partner, later taking over global investment operations alongside Pat Grady.

Alfred Lin
Lin in 2019
Born	1972 (age 52–53) Taiwan[1]
Education	Harvard University (BA) Stanford University (MS)
Occupation	Partner at Sequoia Capital
Spouse	Rebecca Lin
Children	1

Lin was the COO, CFO, and chairman of online retailer Zappos from 2005 to 2010.^[4][5]

Early life and education

Lin was born in Taiwan. At the age of six, his parents immigrated to the New York, where Lin attended Stuyvesant High School.^[6][7] He then graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in applied mathematics and earned a master's degree in statistics from Stanford University.

Career

While at Harvard, Lin met Tony Hsieh, the future CEO of Zappos.^[6] Hsieh first recognized Lin's business acumen while running a student-owned pizza parlor at Harvard. Lin, his best customer, was buying whole pizzas, splitting them into slices, and selling them for a profit.^[6] In 1996, Lin dropped out of a Ph.D. program at Stanford to join Hsieh, Sanjay Mandan, and Ali Partovi at LinkExchange as CFO.^[2] 18 months later LinkExchange sold to Microsoft for $265 million.^[8] Later, before joining Zappos, Lin was the VP of Finance and Business Development of Tellme Networks (MSFT). With Tony Hsieh he also co-founded Venture Frogs, an incubator and investment firm.^[9] Venture Frogs invested in a variety of tech and Internet startups, including Ask Jeeves, OpenTable, Tellme Networks, and Zappos.^[10]

From 2005 to 2010, Lin was chairman, COO, and CFO.^[11] At Zappos, Lin was responsible for all financial, administrative, and warehouse operations.^[12] He was also responsible for company growth and scaling, bringing the company to its first profitable year in 2006 and to Amazon.com's acquisition of the company in 2009 for $1.2 billion.^{[13][14][15][16]} According to TechCrunch, "Hsieh made at least $214 million; Lin made at least $18 million, with the Venture Frogs shares netting an additional $163 million."^[17]

Lin left Zappos in 2010 to join the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital as a partner.^[18][13]

Sequoia Capital

TechCrunch has stated that Alfred has the "Midas touch", since "every company he's worked for has been acquired, and the smallest deal was $265 million."^[2] Lin later helped Tellme Networks which was sold to Microsoft for $800 million.^[19] After that, Lin helped form Zappos to later be acquired by Amazon for $1.2 billion. Lin 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).^[20][21][22] He specializes in consumer internet, enterprise and mobile companies.^[23]

Lin was an early investor in Zipline, a medicine drone delivery company with operations in Rwanda.^[24] He also invested in the Palo Alto-based security company Cobalt Robotics, and sits on its board of directors.^[25] In 2021, Lin made a failed investment on FTX and represented Sequoia on its advisory board.^[26][27][28]

In November 2025, Lin was appointed the managing partner of Sequoia, to serve jointly with Pat Grady, succeeding Roelof Botha.^[3]

Recognition

In 2013, Forbes named Lin as one of the "30 Most Influential People in Tech".^[29] Lin and his work have been profiled in national publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, BusinessWeek, and Fortune, as well as CNBC.^{[11][30][31][32]}