Mark Lee

Co-Founder & CEO Splashtop Inc.

Last Reviewed: September 18, 2026

Executive Summary

Mark Lee is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Splashtop, the remote access, remote support and endpoint management company. Splashtop’s business rests on a proposition that sounds simple and is technically difficult: that a person should be able to reach and operate a distant computer at a quality indistinguishable from sitting in front of it, over ordinary networks, on any device. The company built a low-latency streaming engine to do that, shipped it preinstalled on more than 100 million devices through OEM partners, and then expanded from consumer and prosumer remote access into the enterprise IT market, where the same engine underpins remote support, endpoint management and secure access. What is distinctive about Lee’s record is the persistence of the company through a complete change of identity: Splashtop began in 2006 as DeviceVM, building instant-on Linux environments for PCs, and became Splashtop only in 2010 after a pivot. He has led it throughout, taking it past a $1 billion valuation and, in April 2026, to a finalist place in EY’s Entrepreneur Of The Year programme for the Bay Area.

Career Highlights

• Co-founded the company that became Splashtop in 2006, alongside three fellow MIT alumni — Thomas Deng, Philip Sheu and Robert Ha — and has led it as CEO throughout.
• Named an EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2026 Bay Area finalist in April 2026.
• Took Splashtop past a $1 billion valuation on a $50 million round led by Sapphire Ventures.
• Grew Splashtop to more than 6 million users, with software shipped preinstalled on more than 100 million devices by major OEMs.
• Expanded the company from remote access into broader IT operations and autonomous endpoint management.
• Previously co-founded OSA Technologies and sold it to Avocent in 2004 for a reported sum in excess of $100 million.
• Served as a Senior Vice President of Avocent from 2004 to 2006 following the acquisition.
• Spent roughly eight years at Intel across software, chip design and marketing.
• Re-elected to the Board of Directors of The Linux Foundation as a Silver Members representative for a second two-year term.
• Splashtop products won PC World’s Most Innovative Product award and LAPTOP Magazine’s Best of 2012 CES award.

Professional Journey

Lee took both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and began his career at Intel, where he spent roughly eight years working across software, chip design and marketing — an unusually broad grounding that covered both the silicon and the commercial sides of the business.

He left to co-found OSA Technologies, which worked on systems management firmware and standards for server hardware. Avocent, the KVM and data-centre management company, acquired OSA in 2004 for a figure reported at more than $100 million, and Lee stayed on as a Senior Vice President of Avocent through 2006.

That year he and three MIT classmates — Thomas Deng, Philip Sheu and Robert Ha — founded DeviceVM. The original product was an instant-on environment that let a PC boot into a lightweight Linux system in seconds rather than waiting for Windows, shipped by OEMs on their laptops. The work put Lee into the open-source world and onto the Board of Directors of The Linux Foundation as a Silver Members representative, a seat to which he was subsequently re-elected for a second two-year term.

Instant-on did not become the durable business; remote access did. In 2010 the company rebranded as Splashtop around the technology that turned out to matter most — a high-performance streaming engine capable of delivering a remote desktop at near-local responsiveness. Splashtop’s apps won PC World’s Most Innovative Product award and LAPTOP Magazine’s Best of 2012 CES award, and the OEM channel that DeviceVM had built carried Splashtop onto more than 100 million devices.

The company then moved upmarket. Remote access for individuals became remote support for IT departments and managed service providers, and then endpoint management and secure access — a market where the competition is enterprise IT operations vendors rather than consumer app makers. Splashtop raised $50 million led by Sapphire Ventures at a valuation above $1 billion, and has more recently positioned itself around autonomous endpoint management. EY named Lee a Bay Area finalist for its 2026 Entrepreneur Of The Year award, citing more than two decades of entrepreneurial leadership and a pattern of spotting inflection points early and realigning the business to meet them — a fair description of a company that changed its name, its product and its market and kept the same chief executive.

Education

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Bachelor of Science, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Master of Science, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Arizona State University

Executive MBA