// PERSON
Aileen Lee
ROLE FOUNDERAT COWBOY VENTURESMENTIONS 1LAST SEEN MAY 26, 2026
// BIO
Aileen Lee is the founder and managing partner of Cowboy Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital firm she established in 2012. She previously spent over a decade as a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, where she worked with companies including Bloom Energy and Rent the Runway. She is best known for coining the term "unicorn" in a 2013 TechCrunch article to describe privately held startups valued at one billion dollars or more.
// RECENT MENTIONS
// SIGNALS
1 SIGNAL
01
mention·Axios Pro Rata·MAY 26, 2026
“In November 2013, Aileen Lee coined 'unicorn' to describe startups worth $1 billion or more. The threshold now should be $1.43 billion, based on the CPI calculator.”
AI-extracted from podcast / newsletter / paper summaries. May contain errors.