Lane Bess (born September 18, 1961) is a venture capitalist known for his work in technology. He has served as principal and founder of family fund Bess Ventures and Advisory, LLC, a strategic management, investment and marketing services firm, since February 2015.^[1][2]

Bess graduated from Ocean Township High School in 1979.^[3]

In 1983, Bess received a Bachelor of Science degree in Managerial Economics from Carnegie Mellon University. Bess has served as a Trustee of Carnegie Mellon University since June 2019.^[4][5]

Bess held senior sales and marketing positions at NCR Corporation.^[6]

Bess also served as President of Trend Micro.^[7][8] In 2008, he became president and CEO of Palo Alto Networks, where in 2010 he was preparing the company for an initial public offering.^[9] From 2011 to 2015, Bess was the COO of Zscaler.^[10][11][12]

Bess serves on the boards of several companies, including Deep Instinct,^[13][14] eSentire, TrueFort, ZeroFOX, PLUM (SPAC).^{[8][15][16][17][18][19][20]}

On December 11, 2021, Bess flew into space aboard Blue Origin NS-19.^[21] Bess, along with the other members of Blue Origins NS-19, were the final recipients of the FAA Commercial Space Astronaut Wings,^[22] an aviator wings-like badge created by the Federal Aviation Administration to encourage and draw attention to commercial space flight.

Bess is married to his wife Letty.^[23] His son Cameron Bess accompanied him to space aboard Blue Origin NS-19, making them the first parent-child pair to fly to space together.^[3] Cameron is a furry, identifies as pansexual, and streams on Twitch.^[24][25]