Hee Yau Phoon Brings Venture Building Experience to Proto Ventures, Delta V
By Jennifer Bonniwell | Proto Ventures News
March 12, 2025
Hee Yau Phoon spent over two decades in the renewable energy, infrastructure, and utility industry before coming to MIT. During this time, he successfully built two ventures.
So when he came to MIT’s Sloan Fellows program on a Fulbright Scholarship, he set out to combine his experience in the energy sector with his venture building skills. It was a natural fit to partner with MIT venture studio Proto Ventures to find his next project.
“This was such a unique opportunity to work within a university venture studio and help commercialize high-potential clean energy innovations from MIT’s cutting-edge research,” Phoon said. “I’ve always been passionate about incubating ideas and ventures. Helping to commercialize and scale them perfectly aligns with my background in business strategy.”
In summer 2024, Phoon participated in MIT’s delta v student venture accelerator. The project was a Proto Ventures startup based on tech from MIT labs that enabled AI and high-performance computing in high-density data centers.
Phoon’s Path to Venture Building
Phoon has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a master’s of science in sustainable engineering, energy systems and the environment. Although he was technically trained, he has spent much of his career in commercial strategy.
In 2010, after a decade at Malaysia’s national utility company, Phoon was tapped to launch a renewable energy venture by a Malaysian oil and gas group. The project involved navigating the complexities of identifying a market need, assembling a team from scratch, and finding the right technology and solution to deliver renewable energy projects to customers. Over six years, Phoon built a team of 100 and secured more than $1 billion in renewable energy projects in Asia and the UK.
Phoon then transitioned to lead corporate development for an infrastructure and manufacturing conglomerate. During the pandemic, he spearheaded the launch of a medical glove business, overcoming supply chain disruptions and regulatory hurdles to get the venture off the ground within a year.
“Proto Ventures is about being much more intentional in the process about who we involve in the venture building process,” said David Cohen-Tanugi, venture builder for Proto Ventures. “By inviting Hee Yau to join us as a Proto Ventures fellow, we added deep business experience and sector expertise in areas that were highly aligned with our venture building mission at MIT.”
Inside the MIT’s Venture Studio
Phoon took a year off from his career to pursue the Sloan Fellows MBA program at MIT Sloan School of Business. His goal at MIT was to refine his business skills, meet great minds, and collaborate with talented people to find his next venture. He was especially excited for the opportunity to work with the Proto Ventures’ team.
“I’m passionate about making a meaningful impact in clean energy and sustainability,” Phoon said. “I was eager to find a venture with the potential to make a global impact, and Proto Ventures provided the opportunity to align promising innovations with market needs.”
Similarly, Proto Ventures recognized that Phoon’s energy industry experience and entrepreneurial background would be a tremendous asset to its venture exploration process.
Throughout fall 2023, Phoon and Cohen-Tanugi spent their time exploring business and tech opportunities related to direct-current electrical system architectures for data centers and superconducting technologies for microgrids. Their work involved screening technologies, visiting data centers, and engaging industry experts. These explorations led to a few promising concepts—including a superconducting power system for data centers that would leverage several inventions from MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC).
“The Proto Ventures process leverages experienced businesspeople to catalyze better and more impactful technology startups, and our structured methodology teaches these individuals how to intentionally design a deep tech venture,” Cohen-Tanugi said.
However, despite promising concepts, the team decided not to pursue the superconducting power system, as the customer value proposition wasn’t compelling enough.
“In the end, we couldn’t convince ourselves that there was a truly compelling customer value proposition there,” Cohen-Tanugi said. “A key part of the Proto Ventures method is ruthlessly distinguishing between commercialization efforts that are very likely to succeed and those that aren’t.”
During a data center visit in New Jersey together with Cohen-Tanugi and Sloan Fellow Cynthia Liao, Phoon identified a market need for high power density at the server rack. The revelation led Phoon to partner with Liao, who was leading the commercialization of a vertical gallium nitride (GaN) power transistor technology developed in MIT electrical engineering professor Tomás Palacios’ lab. The tech has the potential to increase power density and power conversion efficiency for data centers, electric vehicles, and renewable energy applications.
Beyond Proto Ventures
In summer 2024, Phoon and Liao and the venture they worked on – Vertical Horizons – was accepted in the MIT delta v student venture accelerator. Over the summer, Phoon worked with the new venture to further narrow down the beachhead market, pin down customer pain points, translate the technology into products and solutions, and develop a credible business proposition.
Upon completing the MIT delta v accelerator program in September, Phoon returned to Malaysia, where he now leads a clean energy company dedicated to delivering sustainable solutions across Asia.
About MIT Proto Ventures
Proto Ventures is the first-ever venture studio of this kind within a university. Proto Ventures launched in October 2019 under the MIT Innovation Initiative (now the MIT Office of Innovation) with the goal of accelerating the creation of ventures from MIT research.
Like a private-sector venture studio, Proto Ventures curates ideas from within MIT’s ecosystem of labs and shepherds them to market. A key distinction with traditional university entrepreneurship programs is that Proto Ventures staff play a proactive role in coming up with ideas, forming teams, and shaping the direction of projects.
“We start with problems first – seeking out the world’s hardest problems, then building ventures to solve them,” Cohen-Tanugi said.
The Vertical Horizons project is within Proto Ventures’ Fusion & Clean Energy channel, which launched in 2022 in partnership with MIT’s Plasma Science Fusion Center (PSFC). This channel focuses on creating groundbreaking new opportunities in clean energy by leveraging MIT’s top-tier talent and core competencies, including superconducting magnets, artificial intelligence, robotics, plasma science, high-power radio frequency systems, cryogenics, advanced materials, electromagnetic sensors, and high energy physics.
Learn more about Proto Ventures on substack.
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