Taehong Huh has been a managing partner at GS Futures, the corporate venture arm of Korean conglomerate GS Group, since 2020, where he leads the unit’s funds in climate and energy transition, construction and real estate and consumer sectors.
Keen to usher in a more modern perspective to the family-owned company, Huh says his strength is in inspiring innovation and focusing on building a collaborative ecosystem through venture.
After receiving his MBA from Stanford in 2017, Huh spent 2018 to 2020 networking and ecosystem building, which resulted in the launch of GS Futures in San Francisco in 2020 – just as the covid-19 pandemic hit.
“Be very careful to understand the structure before you choose which firm to join.”
“It was definitely a challenge, but we were able to get so much done so quickly. We were taking up to 12 Zoom meetings a day with people around the world, with whom it would have been very difficult to meet otherwise.”
Fast forward three years, and the team of more than a dozen has done 12 fund investments and 45 direct investments of varying sizes across the future of energy, retail and construction.
Huh thought it would take between three and seven years for portfolio companies to begin working with business units. But that was not the case – portfolio companies have flown to Korea 20 times in 2023
alone and fund managers have been to Korea
13 times.
Huh advises those just entering the corporate venturing world to “be very careful to understand the structure before you choose which firm to join.” By joining a CVC, the path to becoming a successful investor may be easier, as you have the backing of the larger unit and can provide real commercial value add to your portfolio companies, he says.
The investing “sweet spot” for GS Futures, says Huh, is late seed to series A. It invests between $2m and $3m per transaction.