Alex Lee

Alex Lee is co-founder and CEO of Truewind, an AI-powered accounting platform. Truewind is his second startup, he told Asian Tech Collective.

Following His Father Into Aerospace

He grew up in a household where his father designed satellites and rockets. That inspired him to spend the first five years of his career as an aerodynamics engineer at Boeing.

He earned a BS in aerospace engineering from USC and later an MBA from Columbia, and invested in early-stage startups at Alliance Ventures and Schematic Ventures, according to Asian Tech Collective.

Leaving Bluelight With Unfinished Business

As a VC associate he often went into portfolio companies to build board decks and tighten up financial reporting. That led to his first startup, Bluelight, an FP&A tool. After two years he left with what he learned: "you can't truly automate finance without owning the debits and credits at the accounting level."

Explaining Accounting With a Coffee Cup

At Truewind, which he runs with co-founder Tennison Chan, Lee argues that accounting is "not only numbers—it's also context," he told MBA Ventures. A coffee cup bought for a venture fund is an office expense, he explained, while the same cup bought by a coffee shop is part of what it sells. Truewind has raised $17 million from Thomson Reuters Ventures, Rho Capital, Pathlight Ventures and Y Combinator, and counts accounting firms including EisnerAmper and Frank Rimerman as users, according to Asian Tech Collective.