Career Path Of A President At I2i Corporate Strategies

During summers in college, I completed internships at Los Alamos Labs in New Mexico for my first two summers. Following that, I interned in California at PAC Bell, which was the local phone company at the time. For the last two years of my undergraduate studies, I interned on campus at Stanford University in the electrical engineering department. I usually mentored incoming undergraduate students.

After finishing my electrical engineering degree, I joined Intel in Chandler, Arizona, as a chip designer. I was part of the graduate rotation program, which allowed me to experience the three major business units at Intel. Once my rotations were complete, I became an applications engineer, working on a digital camera project.

I then moved to Medtronic, where I developed implanted medical devices. It was during this time that I started my MBA education while still with Medtronic. After graduating, I joined Phillips Semiconductor in Tempe. My initial task was to handle the end-of-life process for a processor I had inherited.

Instead, I found a new application for it, and it became the foundation for the broadband division. I was then transferred to Singapore to establish this division. When I took over the project, it generated about $70,000 a month in revenue. Within a year, this grew to over $700 million annually.

Unfortunately, the dot-com bubble disrupted the progress I was making in Singapore. Phillips was sold to NXP, and as a consequence, I decided to attend law school. I chose the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, primarily because I could spend my entire second year of study in London. Notre Dame has a campus located between Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus, right in the heart of London.

There, I focused my studies on international IP and comparative law. This involved understanding the nuanced differences between patent regimes in the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and the PCT. After graduating from law school, I returned to Silicon Valley to practice at Fenwick and West, a regional firm specializing in the high-tech industry.

In that role, I was involved in several acquisitions as part of the Cisco deal team. At that time, Cisco was very active in acquiring companies. I also received my initial training in negotiating financing documents, typically on behalf of our startup clients against opposing counsel representing their venture capitalists or investors.

In 2008, another market crash impacted my work in corporate strategy. I was asked to transition to IP litigation, where I defended prominent Silicon Valley companies against patent trolls. While this sounds like intense legal conflict, it primarily involved tedious motion practice. Therefore, I quickly moved out of that role and joined Applied Materials.

I was the first employee hired to build a materials division. This largely involved company acquisitions, but I also launched an internal incubator modeled after Cisco's spin-out, spin-in approach. I adapted this concept and presented it to the chairman of SK Holdings. He granted me access to the company's balance sheet and operating expenses to establish and manage a core technology accelerator for him in Silicon Valley.

Over my seven years in that position, I personally led seven investments. Five of these investments have been and continue to be successful, raising a combined total of almost $2 billion. Using this track record, I started my own venture capital fund.

We aimed to raise a $150 million fund and had secured $50 million in commitments. However, political disagreements within the country were mirrored within our partnership, leading us in different directions. Subsequently, I transitioned to the investor side and have been assisting early-stage companies with corporate strategy services. This involves helping them raise capital or prepare for an exit, whether through acquisition or an IPO.