VC Corner: Sarah Ko-yung Lee of Peak State Ventures

Sarah Ko-yung Lee is a a former education startup founder with 17+ years of experience scaling innovative education programs/schools, coaching founding teams of EdTech Startups globally, and investing in future-of-learning/future-of-work companies (seed-Series C). She’s currently a partner at Peak State Ventures.

— What is Peak State Ventures’ mission?

We help great entrepreneurs build legendary companies. We are experienced entrepreneurs, operators, advisors, and investors with multiple successful exits looking for future category leaders. We will work with seed stage entrepreneurs to bring a product to market and support a company through Series A+ rounds and later stage of growth and expansion.

— What was your very first investment? What struck you about them?

One of my first investments at Peak State Ventures was in an esports company that connects pro players with aspiring gamers — a MasterClass for Fortnight if you will. For context, we don’t even have a television in our home, so the gaming space was a new, but truly fascinating space to dive into from an edtech/educators perspective.

The more I learned about the games themselves and the massive market, the more clear my conviction about esports as an important future-of-learning play. Of course the founders were awesome, ambitious, and ridiculously smart.

Once I could clearly map skills from gaming to skills obtained in traditional academic or after-school program settings, the potential to reach that many eyeballs for that many hours of a day was powerful. The fact that esports was formalizing within high schools and universities and an official sport in the Asian Olympic games further validated this sector as much more than pure entertainment, but rather, a gateway drug for tech pathways and as evidence of how to straddle parallel lives — digital and IRL.

This investment was a tangible example of how I define edtech — a technology that facilitates learning and human development, agnostic of content, geography, language, age, or socioeconomic status. To me, ProGuides confirmed that edtech certainly does not need to be contained within the four walls of a school or focus on reading, writing, and arithmetics.

— What’s one thing you’re excited about right now?

I am thrilled that educators, teachers, parents, digital learning, early childhood care workers, edtech are all getting some well-deserved, overdue time in the startup/VC spotlight. It’s about time. Now, how do we (investors and founders in learning) make the most of this moment?

— Who is one founder we should watch?

Atif Mahmood, founder and CEO of Teacherly, is truly one of the only companies I have come across that is 110% focused on building professional, high-quality, easy-to-use, beautiful tools and community specifically for educators. Tools that are of the same quality as the products/services we have come accustomed to in the white collar corporate world and provide teachers, coaches, senior care providers, early childhood guides, and now parents with the dignity these jobs warrant. Why should educators of any stripe have to settle for cobbled-together tools to do their jobs?

— What are the 3 top qualities of every great leader?

1. Discernment — to take in and juggle immense quantities of input of varying quality and make decisions.
2. Conviction — to turn ambition into vision and inspire people to pay attention..
3. Humility — to extract genuine joy and pride from the success of others as you succeed.

— What’s one question you ask yourself before investing in a company?

Does this technology fundamentally speed up learning, productivity, or human development in significant ways? And can the company scale this impact really fast?

— What’s one thing every founder should ask themselves before walking into a meeting with a potential investor?

How does this partner and fund fit into my short- and long-term strategy for growth?

— What do you think should be in a CEO’s top 3 company priorities?

1. Do I have the right people around me and are they empowered to exceed expectations?
2. Do I have a framework / set of values for making tough decisions and prioritizing resources?
3. Am I striking a healthy balance between unflinching adherence to the vision and flexibility, openness to the evidence coming from the market/customers?

— Favorite business book, blog or podcast?

I’m inspired by a lot of contemporary content including Malcom Gladwell, Howard Schultz, and Masters of Scale. However, I am often drawn to thinkers from prior eras who provide lasting wisdom: Sun-Tsu, Aristotle, and especially Dr. Maria Montessori. Montessori wrote, “Only through freedom and environmental experience is it practically possible for human development to occur.”

— Who is one leader you admire?

Maria Klawe, President of Harvey Mudd College, has long been implementing specific changes to increase the number of women in STEM. She is an admirable example of using her position and platform to execute tactical strategies — positive action, not just nice words matter.

— What’s one interesting thing most people won’t know about you?

I was born in Taipei, but spent my early childhood living in Costa Rica before immigrating to the United States. I spoke Mandarin Chinese and Spanish when we arrived and thus spent the first two years of California public school education mostly in ESL classes.

— What’s one piece of advice you’d give every founder?

You are always raising two rounds at the same time.

Ready to make a pitch? Startups looking for an opportunity to pitch Peak State Ventures can apply here!