David Lee is currently the Chairman, President and CEO of Sentient Fund Management and Managing Director of Sentient Ventures, a venture capital firm that forms and manages venture capital funds that invest in commercialization, early, and expansion stage private companies. Since 2002, David has also been a Venture Partner with Emergent Technologies, a seed and early stage life sciences venture capital firm specializing in the commercialization of intellectual property and laboratory science developed within universities and research institutions. He is currently President of Emergent Technologies Fund IV, to be invested in technologies licensed from The University of Texas System.

From 2000 to 2002, Mr. Lee was the Managing Partner of the Austin office for Murphree Venture Partners, a traditional early-stage venture capital firm focused on life sciences and information technology investments including infrastructure software, telecommunications, and materials. He was a member of the investment committee, involved as a board member/observer for multiple portfolio companies and financing transactions, and drove the packaging and sale of two early stage portfolio companies along with the recapitalization of a third company.

From 1997 to 2000, Mr. Lee held various senior executive positions and was an officer at Viasoft, a public enterprise software company that developed e-Business solutions designed to simplify the integration of existing systems with the web and related technologies. His roles included Senior Vice-President of the Products Division with worldwide Marketing, R&D;, and Customer Support, an associated $100 million P&L;, and approximately 1200 internationally dispersed Global 5000 customers. Viasoft was successfully acquired by Allen Systems Group in 2000 for $152 million. From 1993 to 1997, Mr. Lee was with Tivoli Systems, a developer of system management software. The company grew from a start-up in 1993, to an initial public offering in 1995, an acquisition by IBM for $743 million in 1996, and annual sales exceeding $1 billion in 1997. His roles included Manager of International Development based in Rome, Italy, which incorporated four 2 nd-line organizations and produced over $100 million in revenue, with the charter of integrating these groups into Tivoli. Mr. Lee began his career as a Software Designer at Tandem Computers in 1990.

A subset of Mr. Lee’s current and previous professional affiliations include: Chairman of the Board, TexChange Austin; Board Member, Entrepreneurs Foundation and Idea Network; Board Member, Proactive Medical Technologies, Inc.; Steering Committee Member, Austin Technology Incubator (ATI); Steering Committee Member, Venture Capital Fellows Entrepreneurship Program; Advisory Board Member, 3M Vision Grant; Guest Lecturer, McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin; Member, Biotechnology Forum of the Austin Chamber of Commerce; Judge, Moot Corp Competition; Selection Committee Member, Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce (GACC) Awards; Presenter/Panelist, various organizations including Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) and The IndUS Entrepreneurs (TiE).