For the 176th episode of The VentureFizz Podcast, I interviewed Lee Hower, Co-Founder & Partner of NextView Ventures.
I have been wanting to interview Lee for a long time, as he has played a key role in the early stages of two iconic tech companies. He was an early employee at PayPal and was part of the founding team at LinkedIn before becoming a venture capitalist. Needless to say, he’s worked with some amazing people like Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, David Sacks, and others.
He shares some awesome stories around each company, especially how LinkedIn started to gain traction in the early days.
Today, Lee is a Partner & Co-Founder of NextView Ventures, a seed stage investment firm that is focused on investing into companies that are redesigning the Everyday Economy.
In this episode of our podcast, we cover:
- Lee’s background and why he was so interested in joining a startup after college.
- How he met Elon Musk which landed him a job at the startup he was working on that turned into PayPal.
- A deep dive into the early foundational years at LinkedIn.
- His transition into VC and all the details on NextView Ventures.
- Why you shouldn't hire specialists for your startup.
- And so much more.
Keith Cline is the Founder of VentureFizz. Follow him on Twitter: @kcline6.