Curtis Lee (entrepreneur)

Curtis Lee is an American serial entrepreneur, angel investor, co-founder and Chairman of Pinwheel, co-founder and former CEO of the on-demand car services company, Luxe. Prior to Luxe, Lee also founded workforce analytics company, WorkStory.

Curtis Lee
Born
Los Angeles
NationalityUnited States
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Known forFounder & CEO of Luxe and Founder & President of Pinwheel

Early life and background

Lee was born in Los Angeles, California. He is the son of Korean immigrants[1] who came to the United States to attend university. He was raised in Los Angeles and later enrolled in college at the University of California, Berkeley. Lee later earned an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Career

Before Lee became an entrepreneur, Lee worked in venture capital and financial services for five years and as a product manager at various technology companies. Notably, 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]

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 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]

Lee recently made public in a blog post[9] that he is a staunchly against Executive Order 1379—the "Immigration Ban" even going as far as creating a "vocalization shift" allowing Luxe employees to take a day off from work to protest.[10] After which, Lee was accused of paying his employees to protest against President Donald Trump.[11]

References
  1. "Could "Social Justice Benefits" Be The Newest Employment Trend?". Fast Company. 2017-04-20. Retrieved 2017-04-20.
  2. Kincaid, Jason. "Zynga Starts Testing SMS Notifications As It Tries To Kick Its Facebook Dependence". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-06-14.
  3. Lunden, Ingrid. "Groupon Hires Curtis Lee Away From Zynga To Become Its New VP Of Consumer Products". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-06-14.
  4. MacMillan, Douglas. "New Valet App Luxe Eases Parking Nightmares". WSJ. Retrieved 2016-06-14.
  5. Talks, Forbes Trep. "Valets On Demand: Can Luxe Solve Our Parking Mess?". Forbes. Retrieved 2016-06-14.
  6. Tilton, Sarah. "San Francisco Entrepreneur Aims To Make Parking 'A Delight' With On-Demand Valet". Forbes. Retrieved 2016-06-14.
  7. "THE SILICON VALLEY 100: The most amazing and inspiring people in tech right now". Business Insider. Retrieved 2016-06-14.
  8. "Meet NPA's 40 Under 40 - National Parking Association". weareparking.org. Retrieved 2016-06-14.
  9. "What Luxe Stands For". Curtis Lee. 2017-01-31. Retrieved 2017-04-20.
  10. "Could "Social Justice Benefits" Be The Newest Employment Trend?". Fast Company. 2017-04-20. Retrieved 2017-04-20.
  11. Sign, Christopher (2017-02-02). "CEO: Luxe Valet will provide paid leave to protest President Trump". KNXV. Retrieved 2017-04-20.
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