Alfred Lin

At the age of six, Lin emigrated with his family from Taiwan to New York City; during his childhood the family moved several times, changing schools in search of better school districts. He has said he was fascinated from an early age by how businesses operated and how to invest in them; in junior high he tried to scale a lawn-mowing service, which did not last a whole summer.⁠[1][2][2]

Lin received a Bachelor of Arts in Applied Mathematics from Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry. At a dorm party at Harvard he met Tony Hsieh, who was a year behind him; in college he bought whole pizzas from the dormitory restaurant Hsieh ran and resold them to fellow students by the slice.⁠[3][4][4]

He then entered the Ph.D. program in statistics at Stanford University but did not complete it, receiving a Master of Science in Statistics from Stanford. He has said that at the time he found reading business cases more interesting than statistics.⁠[2][4][3]

Tony Hsieh founded the online advertising exchange LinkExchange in 1996, and Lin joined shortly afterward, serving as Vice President of Finance and Administration from 1996 to 1998. Sequoia Capital invested in LinkExchange in 1997, with Michael MoritzMichael MoritzMichael Moritz is a venture capitalist, writer, and philanthropist who was a partner at Sequoia Capital from 1986 to July 2023 and long served as a member of the firm’s leadership and as its chairman. He represented Sequoia in investments in and on the boards of companies including Yahoo, Google, PayPal, Zappos, Stripe, and Klarna, and he is involved in San Francisco civic affairs through his family foundation Crankstart, local San Francisco media, and political donations.Open the full entry as Sequoia’s partner on the company.⁠[4][3][4][2]

On November 5, 1998, MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft is a technology company founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, with businesses spanning Windows, Microsoft 365, Azure, enterprise software, artificial intelligence, gaming and devices.Open the full entry announced its acquisition of LinkExchange, which it folded into the MSN network, without disclosing financial terms; Microsoft subsequently stated in a quarterly report that it had paid $265 million in stock for the acquisition. Lin has said the deal made Sequoia 17 times its money in 17 months.⁠[5][5][6][2]

After the sale of LinkExchange, Lin and Hsieh founded Venture Frogs, which served as both an incubator and a seed fund. From June 1999 to December 2014, Lin was its co-founder and general manager; the fund invested in companies including Ask Jeeves, OpenTable, Tellme Networks, and Zappos.⁠[2][3]

From January 2001 to June 2005, Lin was Vice President of Finance and Business Development at Tellme Networks, a voice recognition services and platform company. Founded in 1999, Tellme provided voice services including nationwide directory assistance, enterprise customer service, and voice-enabled mobile search.⁠[3][7][7]

On March 14, 2007, Microsoft announced its acquisition of Tellme Networks; financial terms were not announced.⁠[7][7]

The online shoe retailer Zappos began as one of Venture Frogs’ smaller investments. Lin and Hsieh decided to take it over and wound down their venture fund, with Hsieh as chief executive officer and Lin as chief financial officer. Sequoia Capital also invested in Zappos, and Lin and Hsieh again chose to work with Michael Moritz.⁠[4][4][2]

From January 2005 to December 2010, Lin served as Chairman of the Board and Chief Operating Officer of Zappos, and also as its Chief Financial Officer.⁠[3][8]

In the fall of 2008, Sequoia summoned the founders of its portfolio companies to an emergency meeting and delivered a presentation warning of an economic downturn, titled “R.I.P. Good Times”; Lin and Hsieh flew in from Las Vegas to attend. Zappos sales had already begun to soften in the second half of 2008, and after returning the two laid off about 100 employees, roughly 8% of the company’s workforce at the time.⁠[4][4][4][4][4]

On May 4, 2009, in a telephone call with Lin, Peter Krawiec, Amazon’s Vice President of Corporate Development, proposed an all-cash acquisition of Zappos for $750 million (reduced for net debt), and Lin asked whether Amazon would consider an all-stock transaction. On May 22, Zappos made an all-stock counter-proposal of 0.23 shares of Amazon stock for each share of Zappos stock.⁠[8][8][8]

On June 1, Krawiec met Lin in Las Vegas and delivered an exclusivity letter. The letter, signed by the two sides on June 8 and 9, provided for an all-stock acquisition of Zappos for $838 million (reduced for net debt of $52 million as of March 31, 2009 and for transaction costs), plus an additional $40 million in employee retention incentives from Amazon.⁠[8][8][8]

On July 22, 2009, Amazon announced an agreement to acquire Zappos, exchanging approximately 10 million shares of Amazon common stock for all of Zappos’ outstanding shares and assuming its options and warrants, equal to approximately $807 million based on the average closing price for the 45 trading days ending July 17, 2009; Amazon would also provide Zappos employees with $40 million in cash and restricted stock units.⁠[9][9]

Lin was a party to the merger agreement as shareholder representative and, as Zappos’ Chairman, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer, signed the solicitation of written consents from shareholders. Under the agreement, Hsieh, Lin, and Fred Mossler remained as executives, and Lin was granted 44,394 Amazon restricted stock units.⁠[8][8]

On November 1, 2009, Amazon completed its acquisition of all of the equity of Zappos and announced the completion the next day; the Zappos management team remained in place and Zappos continued to operate independently in Las Vegas. Amazon’s 2009 annual report listed consideration of $1.134 billion, consisting of $1.079 billion in stock issued and $55 million in assumed stock options, net.⁠[10][11][11][10]

On March 24, 2010, Lin wrote to all Zappos employees announcing that he would leave the company to join Sequoia Capital, saying he wanted to help entrepreneurs turn their visions into businesses; he planned to stay through January 3, 2011 to complete the transition. The news became public on April 9.⁠[12][12][12][12]

Since October 2010, Lin has been a partner at Sequoia Capital, representing the firm on the boards of several companies; he has been a director of the home design platform Houzz since 2011.⁠[3][3][3]

Sequoia had invested in Airbnb in 2009, before Lin joined the firm. In 2012, the Sequoia partner who had been on Airbnb’s board left the firm, and Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian CheskyBrian CheskyBrian Chesky is an American entrepreneur who is the co-founder, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board of the travel and lodging platform Airbnb. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, in 2007 he and Joe Gebbia rented out airbeds in their San Francisco apartment to their first guests, and in 2008 he co-founded Airbnb with Nathan Blecharczyk, leading the company through Y Combinator, the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic, and its December 2020 initial public offering.Open the full entry asked Michael Moritz to put Lin on the board; Lin joined Airbnb’s board in November 2012.⁠[4][4][3]

Chesky said that he had gone to art school and had no operations experience, while Lin had operational discipline and was highly analytical. Around 2013, during Airbnb’s period of hypergrowth, Lin spent one day a week in the Airbnb office, temporarily helping Chesky ramp up customer service and internal operations.⁠[4][4][4]

When DoorDash CEO Tony XuTony XuTony Xu is the co-founder and chief executive officer of DoorDash and a member of the Meta board of directors. He holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering and operations research from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MBA from Stanford University; his career spans management consulting, internet products, and local commerce services, and he has also made early-stage investments in companies.Open the full entry was earlier raising a seed round, Lin passed on the investment, believing the food delivery space was too crowded and competitive; when the two met again a few years later, Sequoia participated in DoorDash’s Series A round. Lin has been a DoorDash director since May 2014.⁠[4][4][13]

On March 5, 2020, Sequoia sent founders a memo opening with “Coronavirus is the black swan of 2020,” urging portfolio companies to brace for turbulence. The only partner named in the memo was Lin, who recalled attending the “R.I.P. Good Times” meeting in 2008 as Zappos’ COO and CFO and said the presentation had made the team and the business stronger.⁠[4][4][4][4][4]

In March 2020, Airbnb’s business dropped by 80%. When choosing between debt and equity financing, Lin favored debt to avoid a down round; Airbnb ultimately took on $2 billion in debt, delayed its IPO, and went public in December 2020. After the IPO, Lin remained on Airbnb’s board.⁠[4][4][4][4]

DoorDash also went public in December 2020, closing its first day of trading at $190, 86% above its IPO price of $102. Airbnb and DoorDash were the two biggest IPOs of the year.⁠[4][4]

In November 2020, Tony Hsieh, Lin’s longtime partner, died after suffering injuries in a house fire in Connecticut. The two had worked together for 15 years, and days after Hsieh’s death Lin published a “final letter” to him in ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry.⁠[4][4][4]

On February 6, 2024, Lin launched Outlier’s Path, a personal writing site sharing frameworks and principles that help “outlier founders” build companies; the pieces began as his personal knowledge base and were first shared within Sequoia and with Sequoia founders.⁠[14][14][14]

On November 4, 2025, Sequoia Capital announced that Roelof Botha was stepping down as senior steward and that partners Alfred Lin and Pat Grady would succeed him as co-stewards.⁠[15]

On June 5, 2026, Airbnb’s annual meeting of stockholders re-elected Lin as a Class III director of the company for a three-year term.⁠[16][16]

As of October 2026, current portfolio companies Lin has worked with at Sequoia include AnthropicAnthropicAnthropic is an artificial intelligence research and product company founded in 2021 that develops the Claude models, assistant, and tools such as Claude Code, and operates as a public benefit corporation. Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei are its co-founders, and its research covers model safety, interpretability, and steerability.Open the full entry (2026), Citadel SecuritiesCitadel SecuritiesCitadel Securities is an American market maker founded in Chicago in 2002 by Ken Griffin and partners and headquartered in Miami, providing liquidity to institutional and retail investors across a range of financial products. It is a separate company from Citadel, the hedge fund Griffin founded in 1990.Open the full entry (2022), OpenAI (2021), Kalshi (2020), Zipline (2012), Faire (2017), and Physical Intelligence (2024), with the year indicating when Sequoia first partnered with the company.⁠[2][2][2][2][2][2][2]

Companies that have gone public or been acquired include Airbnb, DoorDash, Instacart, Reddit, Uber, Zappos, Humble Bundle, and FutureAdvisor.⁠[2][2][2][2][2][2][2]

Lin believes investors essentially look for the same things: outlier founders, a delightful product or service, a path to a massive market, and a disruptive business model; he focuses more on founders’ unique insights and lived experiences, which he calls “founder-market fit,” and ultimately asks only whether he would love to work for the founders.⁠[2][2][2]

His motto is “Dream about the dent you will put in the universe. Stay grounded in your reality. Build a plan that connects these two worlds.”⁠[2]

Sequoia Capital: Official website: https://sequoiacap.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]

Personal website: https://outlierspath.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[14]

X: Public account: https://x.com/Alfred_Lin (opens in a new window)⁠[14]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/linalfred (opens in a new window)⁠[14]