Name Paul Lee | Role Venture capitalist | |
Paul Lee is a Canadian video game developer, venture capitalist, businessman and entrepreneur. He is most notable for being the former President of Electronic Arts, a video game and interactive software company.
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Early life and education
Lee is of Chinese heritage and is based in Vancouver. He received an undergraduate degree from the University of British Columbia, with a Bachelor of Commerce with Honours, and was one of six students selected to enter the prestigious Portfolio Management Fund program at the UBC Sauder School of Business, where he was a Leslie Wong Fellow. He also holds a Master of Applied Finance from the University of Adelaide and a Master of Real Estate from the University of New South Wales, Australia, as well as the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.
Before his career as a game developer got off the ground, Lee worked in his father’s Vancouver restaurant, Dragon Inn.
Career
He joined Electronic Arts in 1991 and became an executive when it bought Distinctive Software Inc., a leading independent video game developer where he was part owner. He has been the President of Worldwide Studios of EA from 2005 to 2007, where he was responsible for product development in 14 studios. managing 6,000 employees and $1 billion in annual capital.
He is a Co-founder and Managing Partner of Vanedge Capital, a venture capital firm in Vancouver. Founded in 2010, the $100 million venture capital fund Vanedge backed D-Wave Systems, a quantum computing company based in Burnaby, B.C., and Recon Instruments, which was acquired by Intel in June 2015.
Lee talked about the lack of venture capital support for startups in British Columbia, and the reasons he decided to found a venture capital firm there in an interview in a BC Business interview.