Jeremy Liew

Jeremy Liew is an Australian-born venture capitalist and Venture Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, one of Silicon Valley's leading VC firms. He holds a BA/BSc from the Australian National University in Linguistics and Pure Mathematics and an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business (class of 2000). He is best known as the first investor in Snapchat, a $485,000 seed bet that grew 250-fold to nearly $2 billion by the time of Snap's 2017 IPO.

Before entering venture capital, Liew built a deep operating background across the consumer internet landscape. He began his career as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, then became an early employee at CitySearch in 1996, where he held sales management, operational, and business development roles. After completing his Stanford MBA, he served as Vice President of Strategic Planning at USA Networks (Interactive Corp). He then moved to AOL, where he rose to SVP of Corporate Development and Chief of Staff to the CEO, before taking on the role of General Manager of Netscape.

In 2006, Liew joined Lightspeed Venture Partners as the firm's first consumer-focused investing partner, bringing his operator experience to bear on a portfolio that would grow to include some of the decade's most prominent consumer technology companies. In August 2021, approaching his 50th birthday, Liew announced he would step back from actively sourcing and leading new investments. He remains a Venture Partner at Lightspeed, focused on supporting his existing portfolio companies, serving on boards, and mentoring younger partners at the firm.

Liew's investment philosophy centers on pattern recognition rather than prediction. As he has put it: "Our job is not to predict the future, but to recognize an exciting present that can continue to scale." His core thesis revolves around identifying consumer products and platforms that achieve massive scale, particularly those that gain early traction among young women, whom he describes as "the most virulent carriers of popular culture." He has noted that products adopted early by young women — such as Snapchat, Musical.ly, and Glossier — often go on to define mainstream culture.

His sector expertise spans massive-scale social media, consumer commerce, gaming, financial services (fintech), new media, and cryptocurrency/blockchain. He has been particularly influential in consumer social investing, evaluating products on retention curves, usage frequency, download velocity, and organic virality. He is also a proponent of cryptocurrency and co-led the first venture round for Blockchain.com; he has publicly predicted that Bitcoin could reach $500,000 by 2030.