Sooboon Koh

Soo Boon Koh is the founder and managing partner of iGlobe Partners, a Singapore-based venture capital firm. iGlobe says it was established in 1999 in Silicon Valley after Koh was asked by Singapore’s government to set up and manage a corporate venture operation in the United States and Europe for more than a decade. In 2009, she headquartered iGlobe in Singapore, where the firm describes itself as Singapore’s first female-led VC firm.

Koh graduated with a Mathematics degree from King’s College London and returned to Singapore in 1973. She spent 12 years at DBS Bank, beginning as a trader in the dealing room and later working as a project analyst and head of international department, supervising overseas branches’ lending portfolio and international loan syndication operations.

In 1987, Koh became California representative for Singapore Technologies Group, overseeing technology transfer work for Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing. In 1988, she started STG’s corporate venture arm, Vertex Management Inc., in Silicon Valley. Over the next 11 years, she held senior management roles at Vertex, building operations in California and London and investing in fabless semiconductor and smart-card-related companies including Lattice Semiconductor, QuickLogic, QuickTurn, Gemplus, and SCM Microsystems.

Koh was inducted into the Singapore Women’s Hall of Fame in 2022 under Business and Enterprise. She served as chairwoman of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry’s Career Women Group from 2009 to 2019, is a member of the Singapore Chapter of Women Corporate Directors and the International Women Forum, and serves as a fellow at the Singapore University of Social Sciences.

• iGlobe says it “unearth, invest and grow startups into global leaders,” and its firm-level focus is global technology companies that can become category leaders.
• The firm’s listed focus areas are photonics & semiconductors, AI & applications, quantum computing, and biotech & healthtech, with additional stated emphasis on smart cities, synthetic biology, and fintech.
• Koh has said founder quality is central to her decision-making: “I want to see their commitment in what they’re building. I want to be able to trust them.”
• She looks for coachability, humility, customer focus, and team orientation. In a KrASIA interview, she framed a key diligence question as: “Is this entrepreneur coachable?”
• Koh favors patient, long-horizon investing. She has described investing as requiring “patience and perseverance,” and the Singapore Women’s Hall of Fame profile cites iGlobe’s 2000 Telenav investment as an example of staying committed through market stress until the company’s 2009 IPO.
• iGlobe’s 2021 fourth fund, iGlobe Platinum Fund III, was reported by Bloomberg as a $100 million fund focused on cross-border investments in synthetic biology, fintech, and smart-city technologies, backing 15 to 20 startups across the U.S., Europe, and Southeast Asia.