Jess Lee

CEO and Co-Founder of Polyvore

Jess Lee is CEO and Co-Founder of Polyvore, a style & shopping platform recently acquired by Yahoo. Prior to co-founding Polyvore, Jess was a product manager for Google Maps. Jess has a degree in Computer Science from Stanford University.

What got you into tech?

Growing up, I always loved math and science, but it wasn’t until my freshman year at Stanford that I took my first computer science class and discovered a love of programming. While at Stanford, I built a video game for a class project and stumbled upon the thrill of building a product that people could use and interact with. It’s stuck with me ever since.

What is your proudest work accomplishment?

I’m proud of the culture and team we’ve built at Polyvore.

Some of my proudest moments are hearing a team member say Polyvore is the best place they’ve ever worked at.

We were rated one of the Top 20 Workplaces in Tech and one of the Top 100 Workplaces for Women, alongside bigwigs like Google, Twitter and Workday.

I’ve also loved watching the evolution of our team from individual contributors into leaders. A few have even left to start their own companies!

As I’ve grown from a product manager to a first-time entrepreneur and CEO, it’s been challenging to have my role evolve and change underneath me almost every day. The only way to get through these changes is to surround yourself with a great team. Working alongside great people smooths out the bumps in the road, makes it fun, and changes the journey from a slog into an exciting adventure.

Have you ever felt discomfort or discrimination in the workplace or classroom? If so, how did you handle it?

I’ve been fortunate to have only worked at very egalitarian companies like Polyvore and Google, where there were plenty of female leaders and role models. At Polyvore, we have 26% women in engineering, compared to the industry average of 10–15%.

However, I do feel like the fundraising process was a bit harder for us because most investors are male and don’t innately understand the needs of a female audience. When trying to explain Polyvore, we got some confused/negative responses because many men few shopping as an annoying chore or a fun pastime.

However, the good news is that the VC community has started to realize that products targeted at women can be big business, so it’s easier to get capital now.

What makes being a woman in tech awesome?

I’m excited to start to see the beginning of a virtuous cycle where young girls start to see more women in engineering — and therefore think it’s the norm and start exploring those career paths for themselves.

What advice do you have for any women on their journeys in tech?

The best advice I ever received was from my first manager, Marissa Mayer, while I was at Google:

Always follow the more challenging path and go where you can grow the most; even if you don’t succeed, you’ll have learned a lot along the way.

That advice has stayed with me through my career and it’s the same advice I would give others.