Curtis Lee (entrepreneur)
Curtis Lee (born September 17, 1977) is an American entrepreneur, angel investor, and co-founder and CEO of the on-demand car services company, Luxe. Prior to Luxe, Lee also founded workforce analytics company, WorkStory.
| Curtis Lee | |
|---|---|
 Lee in 2014 | |
| Born |
September 17, 1977 Los Angeles |
| Residence | San Francisco |
| Nationality | United States |
| Alma mater |
University of California, Berkeley Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania |
| Known for | Founder & CEO of Luxe |
| Children | 1 |
Early life and background
Lee was born on September 17, 1977 in Los Angeles, California. He is the son of Sun Young Lee and Byung Wu Lee, Korean immigrants who came to the United States to attend university. He lived in Glendale, California, where he graduated from La Cañada Flintridge, California High School and later enrolled in college at the University of California, Berkeley, to study Economics and Business. Lee later earned an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He has one older sister, Stacy, who resides in Los Angeles with her family.
Career
Before Lee became an entrepreneur, Lee worked in venture capital and financial services for six years. Lee spent two years as a M&A analyst for Broadview International after graduating from Berkeley. After that time, he worked at private equity firm, Summit Partners and venture capital firm, Advanced Technology Ventures both in Palo Alto.[1]
After graduating from Wharton, he worked at Google as a Product Marketing Manager on AdWords and later as a Product Manager at YouTube. In 2009, he joined early-stage social gaming startup, Zynga as Director of Product Management for one of their franchise games, Mafia Wars, where he invented many of the company's monetization techniques[2] that helped catapult it to its $7B IPO in 2011.
Lee left Zynga in 2012 to join Groupon as their VP of Consumer Products.[3] He left Groupon to pursue his entrepreneurial pursuits founding WorkStory an early stage workforce analytics company backed by Accel Partners. Lee folded WorkStory to pursue his idea to transform the parking industry. An idea that would turn into Luxe.
Luxe
In 2013, Lee cofounded Luxe,[4] a mobile application that allows customers to have their car parked, fueled, washed, charged, serviced or driven home. Luxe was born out of Lee's frustration with finding a parking space where he lived in San Francisco.[5] Luxe is credited as being an early pioneer in the on-demand economy, along with peers Uber, Lyft and Instacart, having invented the parking on-demand segment.[6] Lee was listed in the Silicon Valley 100 list and was also awarded NPA's 40 under 40 award in 2015.[7][8]
Personal life
Lee lives in San Francisco with his wife, Janet, a real estate developer, their son and French Bulldog, Oliver. He is an avid guitar player, second degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and a sneakerhead amassing a collection of rare Air Jordans.
References
- ↑ "Curtis Lee - Founder & CEO @ Luxe | CrunchBase". www.crunchbase.com. Retrieved 2016-06-14.
- ↑ Kincaid, Jason. "Zynga Starts Testing SMS Notifications As It Tries To Kick Its Facebook Dependence". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-06-14.
- ↑ Lunden, Ingrid. "Groupon Hires Curtis Lee Away From Zynga To Become Its New VP Of Consumer Products". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-06-14.
- ↑ MacMillan, Douglas. "New Valet App Luxe Eases Parking Nightmares". WSJ. Retrieved 2016-06-14.
- ↑ Talks, Forbes Trep. "Valets On Demand: Can Luxe Solve Our Parking Mess?". Forbes. Retrieved 2016-06-14.
- ↑ Tilton, Sarah. "San Francisco Entrepreneur Aims To Make Parking 'A Delight' With On-Demand Valet". Forbes. Retrieved 2016-06-14.
- ↑ "THE SILICON VALLEY 100: The most amazing and inspiring people in tech right now". Business Insider. Retrieved 2016-06-14.
- ↑ "Meet NPA's 40 Under 40 - National Parking Association". weareparking.org. Retrieved 2016-06-14.
