Before coming to corporate venturing, David Lee was already making waves at search engine provider Google. Joining in 2000 as one of the internet giant’s first 200 employees, Lee was the first executive to oversee Google’s international business development. He opened its offices in Europe, Asia and Latin America, and set up Google’s international management teams while setting the foundations for the company’s initial international revenue.
Lee moved into venturing following his departure from Google in 2006. Lee joined SK Telecom Ventures in 2008, where he works alongside general partner Min Park on investing its $100m corporate venturing fund.
In 2008, he also co-founded XG Ventures, a Google alumni angel fund, where he was a partner until 2012 before he left to set up Kstartup, the first Asia-based startup accelerator funded by Google.
To date, he has invested in 40 companies and seen 13 acquisitions over deals conducted for both XG Ventures and SK Telecom.
Some of Lee’s notable SK Telecoms deals are mobile games marketplace Chartboost’s $2m series A and subsequent $19m series B, gaming company Kabam’s 2011 series D worth $85m, an unspecified round into search engine Greplin, and a further undisclosed round into language learning platform English Central.