It’s a success story even GEP wouldn’t have imagined: entrepreneur to business investor in just three years. It took a brilliant man – and the expertise of GEP.
iCurie Lab – from cool investment opportunity to hot investor
Dr. Jeong Hyun Lee is a former NASA and Samsung engineer from South Korea. In 2000 he founded iCurie Lab in South Korea to develop environmentally friendly nanotechnology and micro-miniturisation – high efficiency cooling for applications from microprocessors to air conditioning.
Finding the most favourable climate in the world
Although the technology took off Dr Lee soon realised that he needed a better location for growing a global company based on innovative intellectual property (IP).
“We looked at locations from Switzerland to Ireland and the US west coast,” he says, “but when we talked to GEP we were impressed by the UK’s commitment to entrepreneurship and the technology sector.”
Why iCurie Lab chose the UK
The UK is Europe’s largest IT market and its venture capital centre, representing over half the total invested in Western Europe. That – plus our technically-advanced workforce, world class R&D skills and major research universities such as Oxford and Cambridge – convinced Dr Lee that iCurie Lab’s global headquarters had to be here.
The part GEP played
GEP worked with iCurie Lab to set up as an investable corporate structure in the UK’s favourable tax environment. They helped overcome some quite complex legal issues in Korea and the UK, to transfer in the IP.
Then they introduced a US-based investment company that put in US$3m, for a stake in the company and seats on the board, and have worked with the company since to raise over USD$30m to become a truly global business.
Operating globally from the UK
“Not many new companies outside the UK seemed to know about the benefits of setting up operations here,” says Dr. Lee. “It's a matter of familiarity.”
“The UK offers a lot of benefits over the US if you want to operate globally, but it's a matter of companies realising this. As international awareness grows I believe a lot more IP companies will looking to the UK as a base for global expansion,” says Dr. Lee.
Moving up to the next generation
iCurie Lab is now established and expanding. So Dr Lee is in a position to seed-invest in the next generation of companies that GEP is helping to develop in the UK. Eric Van der Kleij, the GEP dealmaker involved, explains.
“A few years ago we helped Dr Lee create iCurie Lab, this wonderful company in cooling technology. He’s done well enough that he can now afford to invest in other people and technologies, so we’ve created a situation where we’re ‘recycling’ the wealth we create, which is one of the ultimate goals of the programme. Now he has reinvested in another UK start-up, OM Energy,” says Van der Kleij.
“We’re still quite a young department within UKTI, but I look forward to seeing much more of this kind of thing happening in the future. It’s very good work that we’re doing and we are very proud when this kind of thing happens.”