Robert Lessin is a vice chairman of the investment bank Jefferies & Company. He is also a founding member and chairman of Dawntreader Ventures. From 1998 until 2001, he was, in addition to his duties at Dawntreader, chairman and co-chief executive of Wit Capital, which merged with SoundView Technology Group (acquired by The Charles Schwab Corporation, with the resulting entity Schwab SoundView Capital Markets subsequently sold to UBS).
During 1996 to 1998, Mr. Lessin became known as one of the leading angel investors on the East Coast. He was a seed investor in over 50 companies including Overture (sold to Yahoo, Nasdaq: OVER), Register.com (Nasdaq: RCOM), and VerticalNet (Nasdaq: VERT). Prior to co-founding Dawntreader Ventures, Mr. Lessin was vice chairman, member of the executive committee, and head of investment banking at Smith Barney from 1993 to 1997. Under his leadership, Smith Barney's investment banking revenues grew 500% and the firm's profitability improved nearly 800%. Prior to that, Mr. Lessin was at Morgan Stanley where he was vice chairman of the Investment Banking Operating Committee in 1990 and chairman of the Investment Bank's Strategy Committee in 1993.
Mr. Lessin graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Mr. Lessin was an early investor in Answers Corp. (formerly GuruNet).
