Lee Linden

Lee Linden leads Facebook’s emerging initiatives in commerce, including ‘Gifts’ and the ‘Facebook Card’. Previously, Lee founded Karma, a breakthrough mobile commerce platform which allowed smartphone users to instantly send real gifts to others without the burden of physically mailing to addresses. Karma was acquired by Facebook in early 2012. Prior to Karma, Lee founded Tapjoy and piloted the company to its position as a leading mobile advertising platform which today touches more than one billion devices. He began Tapjoy by co-creating multiple top mobile games for iOS/Android and subsequently unraveling the potential of mobile advertising and app distribution at scale. Earlier, Lee worked for venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins and helped launch the iFund, a $100M investment vehicle focused on smartphone application platforms. Lee originally began his career working in product development at Microsoft, where he co-created the Windows Home Server division and shipped the first version of that product to market.

Lee holds a MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and a BA in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan. He grew up in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan and today lives and works in the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area. Lee has been a featured speaker at universities, conferences, and panels worldwide and has received numerous awards for his work including 30 under 30 Best Young Tech Entrepreneur by Bloomberg Businessweek 2012, 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company in 2012, and The Silicon Valley 100 by Business Insider 2013. Lee is an active angel investor with investments in 30+ startups including MyFitnessPal, Mailbox, TinyCo, and Pocket Gems.