Global Corporate Venturing Rising Stars Awards 2017: Choong Sohn

Choong Sohn, senior manager for open innovation at China-based computer equipment maker Lenovo, leads deal-sourcing and deal-execution for strategic investments, partnerships and mergers and acquisitions in the US having joined the company in April last year.

And, having been in involved in corporate venture capital since 2012 starting at phone operator SK Telecom Ventures before becoming a startup adviser, Sohn hit the ground running.

In June, Lenovo partnered Cloudian to “disrupt the $87bn data centre technology market” with software-defined object storage on Lenovo’s appliances. Four months later Sohn lead Lenovo joining as a new investor in Cloudian’s $41m series D round. Peter Hortensius, chief technology and strategy officer for the data centre group at Lenovo, at the time of the D round closing said: “When researching for ways to address the explosive growth in data, Cloudian’s storage solution, leveraging scaleable x86 infrastructure, was the clear winner.”

At the time of writing – mid-December – Sohn said: “I am working to close one more deal before the end of the year.”

He said what attracted him to CVC was the relative lack of competition. Sohn said: “Fewer VCs have the appetite to invest in core innovation areas such as semiconductors, sensors and materials given the lack of venture-type return profiles. My background and interest in these areas is what initially attracted me to CVC given these are often highly strategic areas of innovation for certain technology companies, including Lenovo.”

But strategic interests comes with a price – lots of stakeholders. Sohn said: “Managing innovation souring across all of our business units has been quite a challenge given the size of our team and breadth of technology coverage.”

But he said his ambition would be to “continue sourcing the best external technologies and startups that will drive innovation within Lenovo”.

This was something that would be made easier if the industry created “more opportunities to come together to network, share experiences and best practices”

After completing a master’s in engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sohn began his career in various engineering and marketing roles in the semiconductor industry, including Applied Materials, KLA-Tencor and Samsung. Then, after receiving an MBA from University of California Los Angeles, and briefly working in finance at Deutsche Bank, he joined SK Telecom Ventures in 2012.