Meet the VC Series: Daniel Seo of 3M Ventures & Winston Choe from LG NOVA
For this round of the Meet the VC series, we invited two prominent Corporate VC firms here in the Bay Area, 3M Ventures and LG Nova to join us for a lunch and learn about the state of the CVC industry through the lenes of the Climate Tech/CleanTech industries. The discussion would include how founders can successfully partner with CVCs in general, insights into their investment strategies, available resources for founders etc. The event will be followed by networking with your ClimateTech/CleanTech founders and peers. Lunch is provided.
Speakers:
Daniel Seo – Investment Manager, 3M Ventures
Winston Choe – Director of Innovation Business Development at LG Nova.
Sponsor profiles:
- Silicon Valley Bank - A new subsidiary of First Citizen Bank focused on the innovation economy from Seed to IPO and beyond. www.svb.com
- Trinet - provides businesses with HR solutions including payroll, benefits, risk management and compliance — all in one place www.trinet.com
- Escalon Services - Finance, Bookkeeping, HR, Accounting Services, Benefits, CFO, Controller, Payroll, Insurance, and Sales Operations. https://escalon.services/
- Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman - International law firm with a particular focus on the technology & life sciences, energy, financial, and real estate https://www.pillsburylaw.com/en/
Speakers background.
About Daniel Seo:
Daniel Seo is an investment manager of 3M Ventures, the venture capital arm of 3M Company. As part of 3M Ventures, Daniel identifies and invests in disruptive new technologies and start-up companies of strategic relevance to 3M including climate tech and advanced materials. Daniel is currently based in the SF Bay Area.
Before 3M Ventures, Daniel was in a strategy and business development role at 3M HQ in St. Paul, MN. Prior to joining 3M, Daniel was a management consultant at Roland Berger based in Seoul, Korea. Daniel has also worked for Ernst & Young in England.
Daniel holds bachelor’s degree from University of Warwick in England and MBA from Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.
Outside of work, you can find Daniel performing jazz gigs on his saxophone or building up his wine knowledge in various settings as a holder of level 3 award in wines from Wine and Spirits Education Trust (WSET).
About Winston Choe:
Winston Choe is an entrepreneur, mentor and global tech executive with expertise in business, corporate and venture-development in Mobility, BigData, Security, Digital Health, CleanTech.
He has over 20 years experience and track-record in working with startups in Silicon Valley, to grow from seed to exit, working on corporate-development to engage startups through commercialization, investment, acquisition, and doing venture-development for corporations and accelerators.
He currently works as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) and Innovation Business Development Director at LG NOVA, the innovation-center for LG Electronics in Silicon Valley. Their charter is to build new businesses for LG Electronics by partnering with companies through the Mission-for-the-Future program, where they provide pilot-funding, investments and joint-development and global go-to-market. Winston has launched new businesses for LG Electronics in Digital Health and CleanTech in partnership with 5 companies, and also worked with strategic-parters to expand LG Nova initiatives into new markets.
He was a Founding EIR at PlugandPlayTechCenter, a Venture Accelerator with 30000+ startups, 300+ VCs, 500+ corporate-partners, accelerator-programs in 20 industries, investment-portfolio including 14 unicorns, and global-operations across 30+ sites. Winston co-founded TechGrowthVentures, an accelerator for US-Asia businesses, where he built a portfolio of 20 companies, based on cross-border synergies for supply-chain, joint-development, market-entry, investment. He also worked with governments in South-Asia to establish Accelerator-programs leveraging their local ecosystems with a bridge to Silicon Valley.
Winston holds a Bachelor of Math degree from the University of Waterloo, Canada, majoring in Computer Science and Operations Research. He started his career in R&D at Bell-Northern Research in Canada and Institute of Systems Science in Singapore, and subsequently completed a High-Tech Executive Management program at Stanford.
He is an avid outdoorsman who has completed overlanding trips across North America, with a passion for cooking and playing tennis.
About LG:
LG NOVA is the innovation-center for LG Electronics in Silicon Valley.
Our charter is to build new businesses for LG by partnering with companies through the Mission-for-the-Future program, where we provide pilot-funding, investments from the $100m Nova Prime Fund, joint-development and global commercialization.
Focus Areas: Digital Health, CleanTech, Immersive AI, Smart Lifestyles, Mobility