Jay Eum

Managing Partner at GFT Ventures

Speaker

Jay Eum is a venture capitalist with 20 years of extensive investment experience across both institutional and corporate investment firms. Jay is the Founding Managing Partner of GFT Ventures and a Senior Advisor to Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners (DTCP). GFT Ventures invests in early stage startups focused on frontier technology sectors including artificial intelligence, robotics, cybersecurity, fintech/blockchain, digital healthcare and mobility.

Jay co-founded TransLink Capital, a Palo Alto-based early stage venture capital firm supporting entrepreneurs develop customer connections and partnerships in Asia. Jay was responsible for leading investments in AI, blockchain and consumer technologies including Carbonite (NASDAQ: CARB), Chartboost (acquired by Zynga), Coin (acquired by Fitbit), CoolerScreens, Enterprise DB (acquired by Peak Equity), Epic, Forte, Klaytn, nWay (acquired by Animoca), Peel, Penrose, Provenance, Quantstamp, Rally, SoundHound, Singular, Terra and YuMe (NYSE: YUME).

Prior to TransLink, Jay was Managing Director of Samsung Ventures where he established and led the US venture capital operations for Samsung. Jay directly led several successful Samsung Ventures’ investments including AnalogTech (NASDAQ: AATI), Athena Semiconductor (acquired by Broadcom), Continuous Computing (acquired by RadiSys), DivX (NASDAQ: DIVX), InPhi (NASDAQ: IPHI), Intellon (NASDAQ: ITLN), MontaVista (acquired by Cavium), Pure Digital (acquired by Cisco), Sandbridge (acquired by Qualcomm), SiBeam (acquired by Silicon Image), Techwell (NASDAQ: TWLL) and Teknovus (acquired by Broadcom). Jay also led investments in GCT Semiconductor and Intematix.

Jay started his venture capital career at Vertex Management, Singapore-based venture capital arm of investment firm Temasek Holdings. At Vertex, Jay focused on investments in communications, mobile, and Internet including GRIC Communications (NASDAQ: GRIC). He also represented Vertex at several portfolio companies including PayPal (acquired by eBay), Mobile 365 (acquired by Sybase), Aicent, and R2 Technology. Before Vertex, Jay was Senior Director of business development at Dialpad Communications (acquired by Yahoo), where he closed strategic partnerships with Microsoft, Cisco, and Earthlink. Jay also worked as an Associate at McKinsey in Palo Alto, New York, Beijing, and Seoul and at Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong.

Jay received an MBA from Stanford University and M.S/B.S. in Chemistry from Seoul National University. Jay serves as Chairman and Board Director of the Asia America MultiTechnology Association (AAMA). Jay is also an active angel investor and advisor to several start-ups including Coupang (NYSE: CPNG), KiwiCo, Korbit (acquired by Nexon), Merit, Noom, SoFi (NASDAQ: SOFI) and Tapas (acquired by Kakao).