The rest of the 100 (in alphabetical order): Quinn Li, vice-president and managing director, Qualcomm Ventures
Alongside his vice-president title, for the past three years Quinn Li has also been the managing director for North America at Qualcomm Ventures, the corporate venture capital (CVC) unit of the US-listed chip maker.
Li has been with Qualcomm’s venturing unit for 10 years. He started out as a senior investment manager and worked his way through director and senior director roles along the way. Before joining the unit, Li held engineering and product management positions in IBM, Broadcom, and Lucent.
Li said the ability to make investments with a strong financial return while helping drive forward Qualcomm’s strategic objectives was one of the reasons he was drawn to CVC. He also takes pleasure in helping portfolio firms grow through leveraging Qualcomm’s resources.
Li said some of the unit’s greatest successes had been investments and exits such as A123 Systems, Fitbit, InvenSense, Xiaomi and Waze, with the North America team leading investments in InvenSense and A123 as well as Fitbit. At present, Qualcomm manages 150 companies across its global portfolio.
Li’s ambition is to continue building Qualcomm into a world-class CVC and aims to one day lead a similar programme of his own. He said some of the biggest challenges he has had to overcome along the way have involved finding the balance between strategic and financial objectives, while building the right team with diverse enough experience to expand investments into new areas.
Li thinks CVC can become a stronger industry through the sharing of best practice. He also believes CVCs needed to take a long-term investment stance and demonstrate lasting commitment to investment programmes.
