Victor Boyajian, Global Chair of Venture Technology and Emerging Growth Companies at law firm Dentons, interviewed Quinn Li, Global Head of Venturing, Qualcomm Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of mobile chip and semiconductors company Qualcomm, as it celebrated its 20th anniversary.
The anniversary in November of 2020 showed Qualcomm Ventures now has a presence in the US, China, India, Europe and Latin America, and Li shared with the audience some reflections on what has remained the same over years: “There is a lot of innovation happening all across the globe – that has remained the same. That is why we have expanded internationally.”
Li also pointed out that in some emerging regions like Latin America, Qualcomm had seen many opportunities and growth over the past few years, in particular, agriculture, which he described as a “very big sector, particularly in Brazil”.
Boyajian asked Li about Qualcomm’s insights on one of the rather hot spaces of innovation – automotive technology. “We look at it like a computer or smartphone on wheels. We need sensors, radars, cameras, CPUs etc. to enable it to act like a human being. We look at it as a use case of AI [artificial intelligence]. We leveraged many of the technologies Qualcomm has developed for the smartphone industry,” replied Li, mentioning as an example, self-driving car company Cruise, in which Qualcomm was an early investor and which would be later acquired by automobile manufacturer GM.
Li explained that Qualcomm Ventures seeks in a portfolio company to be a “good fit for Qualcomm”, primarily because the unit aims to be a value-adding investor: “We focus on areas we know best. And once we invest in we try to add value to the companies.”
Li also touched on collaboration within the investment community: “We work very well with other VC firms globally – both financial venture firms and strategic corporate investors like us, such as Microsoft. We share best practices on how to go about investing. We collaborate. Overall, it is a very collaborative environment in the corporate venturing world.”
Li’s advice to new corporate venture investors revolves around taking a long-term view as an investor: “It is a long horizon business. You need to have a long horizon view. You may or may not be able to get returns in a couple of years. Develop a clear thesis on where you are going to invest and how you will work with those companies.”