Shaun Lee is a Principal on the investment team of Mubadala Capital – Ventures, the venture capital arm of Mubadala Investment Company, a ~$230bn sovereign wealth fund. Based out of San Francisco, Shaun primarily focuses on early-stage / growth FinTech and software opportunities in North America. Prior to joining Mubadala, Shaun worked in venture capital at Rogers Venture Partners and in investment banking at UBS. He holds a degree from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
EVCA: How have the skills you developed in your pre-VC work played into your new role?
Shaun: As a former (traumatized and recovering) investment banker, I leverage my financial analysis and data mining expertise to evaluate opportunities in depth and also help founders at the early-growth / growth stages (Series B – D generally) structure their financial operations for rapid scale.
EVCA: What is your most contrarian view on an existing or emerging technology trend
Shaun: While I do believe that the latest generation of FinTech startups will increasingly take more ownership of our lives, I think legacy financial institutions in US are not going away. Through experiencing the challenge of COVID-19 on their operations, many are beginning to wake up and realize that perhaps the time has come for them to accept that their archaic systems are not fit for the demands of the modern customer, and will look to aggressively deploy their massive budget / engineering resources to work with FinTechs to start catching up to their younger competitors.
Emily Man is an investor on Redpoint's growth team where she has invested in companies such as Ramp and Orca Security. Prior to Redpoint, Emily was at Point72 Ventures focused on early-stage fintech where she invested in companies including Mantl, MX, Brace, and Skipify. Emily earned her BA from Columbia University.
EVCA: How have the skills you developed in your pre-VC work played into your new role?
Emily: I started my career as hedge fund analyst covering public equities which gave me a deep understanding of how public market investors approach research, risk, valuation, and portfolio construction. This is an important lens that informs how I diligence and advise companies that have ambitions to be public companies in the future.
EVCA: What is your most contrarian view on an existing or emerging technology trend?
Emily: I believe that the future state of financial services will be invisible and rely more on seamless integrations with other software used in the day-to-day rather than brand recognition. Uber is an early example where they have abstracted away the payments process. Money is a tool and for most people thinking about or manage money is a kind of friction. Fintech and financial services providers today compete on brand and building a loyal customer base but future winners may not need to have much of a visible consumer-facing brand at all!
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