Bio - Back to Reality

Bill Lee was CEO and co-founder of Remarq, a Benchmark Capital-backed collaboration company. At Remarq, Bill guided the company in its development of a complete end-to-end Internet messaging and collaboration platform. Before its acquisition by Critical Path in March 2000 for $265 million, the company developed high-volume messaging platforms for sites such as eBay, Sun, Novell, and Amazon.

Bill is an angel investor and some of his recent investments include Tesla Motors (nasdaq: TSLA), Posterous (acquired by Twitter), SpaceX, Tweetdeck (acquired by Twitter), Chirpify, Hootsuite, Yammer (acquired by Microsoft), Social Concepts (acquired by Big Fish Games), Playhaven (advisory board member), and Zaarly. He is also on the advisory board of i/o ventures (http://www.ventures.io) -- a San Francisco early stage startup program that focuses heavily on mentorship, and on the Board of Directors of Big Fish (http://www.bigfishgames.com).

Bill graduated Beta Gamma Sigma from UC Berkeley with a B.S. in accounting/finance and received a JD/MBA from UCLA.(1) He enjoys playing guitar, surfing, and hanging out at his hotel in the Dominican Republic (http://www.extremehotels.com). He also enjoys wine and is an investor in the first non-French ownership (a couple of acres) in Burgandy's Cote D'or: Batard-Montrachet (just 25 acres). He also has a patent on happy hours US Patent No. 8,180,852.

When he is bored, you can find him on twitter (@westcoastbill) and maintaining a blog at http://www.backtoreality.com.

Footnote: (1) Bill has never worked with a recruiting firm so everything here is most likely true yet prone to exaggeration, blatant self-promotion, sarcasm, and lack of humor. (*).