Thank you,
Alfred Lin
We built this to say thank you. Everything on it is public and cited, and none of it came from anywhere you did not put it yourself.
He was an operator long before he was an investor, and it shows in what he looks for.
Alfred Lin ran finance and operations at Zappos as Chairman of the Board and Chief Operating Officer, from January 2005 to December 2010: the years in which a shoe company became the case study everyone still cites when they talk about what it costs to actually mean it about customers. Before that he was Vice President of Finance and Business Development at Tellme Networks, and Vice President of Finance and Administration at LinkExchange. He co-founded Venture Frogs and ran it for fifteen years.
He joined Sequoia Capital as a partner in October 2010 and has since sat on the boards of Airbnb, DoorDash and Houzz. Both of the first two were companies he backed and then stayed with through the years when the thesis was not yet obvious to anybody else. His own firm describes his approach as founder-market fit, and his view that a partner's most important contribution arrives when the chips are down, which is a claim about temperament rather than about picking.
He emigrated from Taiwan at six, read Applied Mathematics at Harvard, and took a Master of Science in Statistics at Stanford, the university hosting him tonight.
Speaking at the AI Summit at Stanford on Finding Outliers: Founders, Bets, and the New Rules of Ventures.
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The record
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Chairman of the Board and Chief Operating Officer of Zappos, January 2005 to December 2010
Airbnb Investor Relations, board of directorsPartner at Sequoia Capital since October 2010
Sequoia CapitalDirector of Airbnb since November 2012, and of DoorDash since 2014
DoorDash Investor Relations, board of directorsVice President of Finance and Business Development at Tellme Networks, and Vice President of Finance and Administration at LinkExchange
Airbnb Investor Relations, board of directorsBachelor of Arts in Applied Mathematics, Harvard University, and Master of Science in Statistics, Stanford University
Airbnb Investor Relations, board of directors
@alfred-lin
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Alfred, one tap is all this takes. Use an account you already have and @alfred-lin is yours. Nothing new to sign up for, and no password to invent.
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Where this came from
- Role and session read from the event programme, captured 31 July 2026, via AI Summit at Stanford
- Board biography, operating roles, tenure dates and education, via Airbnb Investor Relations
- Partner profile, investing approach, and arrival from Taiwan at six, via Sequoia Capital
- Board membership and tenure, via DoorDash Investor Relations