Interviewed by Douglas Fairbairn on 2023-09-28 in Mountain View, CA
© Computer History Museum
Young Sohn has had a distinguished and diverse career in the semiconductor and IT industries, serving as an executive, investor, and/or advisor at major companies like Intel and Samsung as well as near-startups in need of strong leadership and direction.
Mr. Sohn was born in Korea, but was brought to the US by his mother at the age of 15 after his father was killed in an accident. He attended high school in the Washington DC area and later graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1979, earning a BSEE. While in college, he joined the fencing team, became it’s captain, and won the NCAA championship in 1979.
Sohn’s first job was at the Avondale division of Hewlett Packard. He spent two years there, coming to appreciate the HP culture and how a successful company operated. His next step was to enter the Sloan School at MIT with a goal of combining his technical skills with management science.
While still at MIT, he started his own company, Tektra, to create a database product for the burgeoning PC market. He quickly learned the challenges of entrepreneurship and taking new products to an international market, and after two years decided to focus on his full-time job.
After graduating from MIT, he joined Intel and became product manager for their new Ethernet controller chip. However, in late 1984, he got a call from Andy Grove, then Intel’s President, asking Sohn to join Grove in a series of meetings at Samsung in Korea with the goal of setting up a strategic partnership whereby Samsung would manufacture Intel’s memory chips. Sohn was then asked to head the new joint venture, growing the office from 0 to 200 people in four years. He later returned to the US to startup Intel’s chipset business, but found he missed the responsibility and independence which came from running his own operation overseas.
A call from a headhunter convinced him to join Quantum as president of Asia, where he had the responsibility to again establish a new Asian operation, including manufacturing capabilities. He later became president of Quantum’s whole disk drive operation, learning first-hand the strategies and challenges of running a fast-cycle-time high tech business, where new products had to appear every 9 months.
He continued his varied and successful career, serving as CEO of Oak Technologies, president of Agilent’s semiconductor business, CEO of Inphi and Cymer, and eventually serving for almost a decade back with Samsung as president of their Strategy and M&A business group. Along the way he has served on multiple boards and volunteered for two years working with Nicholas Negroponte promoting his “One Laptop per Child” program.
Young Sohn retired from Samsung in 2021 and became a cofounder of a new venture firm, Walden Catalyst. He continues to maintain a work/life balance, exercising vigorously every morning for an hour and enjoying his passion for kitesurfing. He is married and has three accomplished children, two of whom work with him part-time in the family investing business.
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Catalog Number: 102808915
Acquisition Number: 2023.0159
11 апр 2024
