Rob Trice (pictured), senior managing director of South Korea-based phone operator SK Telecom’s corporate venturing unit in the US, has left after nearly four years to work at least part time for peer Swisscom.
Swisscom Ventures in Silicon Valley, California, had worked in the same building as SK Telecom Ventures (SKTV). Trice, who declined to comment, is expected to work with Ursula Oesterle, vice-president of innovations at Swisscom and who has been managing Swisscom’s open innovation and scouting activities out of Silicon Valley, and Switzerland-based Dominique Mégret, head of Swisscom Ventures.
Trice’s recent deals at SKTV have included Sequent Software, for which he joined its board, Billing Revolution and Chartboost.
Prior to joining SKTV in September 2008, Trice spent eight years at phone maker Nokia’s corporate venturing units. He was a co-founding partner of Nokia Growth Partners, the global growth-stage venture capital arm of Nokia with $350m under management for direct and fund-to-fund investing, and from late 2000 until the end of 2004 he worked at Nokia Venture Partners (now BlueRun Ventures) on early-stage venture investments in the US and overseas.
Previously, Trice worked at DirecTV in Los Angeles, US, and Tokyo, Japan, in a variety of operational and business planning roles. Rob also worked as an international policy analyst at a Washington, DC-based think tank, the Center for Strategic & International Studies.
Trice’s departure follows a number of separate and unrelated changes by the Ventures unit’s parent, SK Telecom, which has been roiled by organisational upheaval following indictments for alleged embezzlement by some directors in South Korea and the company and wider group has been using a broad range of innovation platforms to maintain its success.
Last month, SK Planet, an innovation platform set up by SK Telecom last year, backed US-based search engine Quixey’s $20m round, while in the same month SK Group, the phone operator’s parent conglomerate, reportedly launched a KrW100bn ($85m) corporate venturing fund to invest in its suppliers.
The group three affiliates – SK Securities, SK Telecom and SK Global Chemical – are backing the fund, which is in being started in cooperation with the state-run Korea Finance Cooperation and KDB Capital, according to news provider Korea Times.
The SK fund registered with the Financial Services Commission in April and will operate under SK Securities and KDB Capital until 2018. The fund will buy up to KrW5bn in shares of each firm as a direct investment.