Meet the team: 5 Questions with Stephanie Shao Ni Ng, Director at Qualcomm Ventures

Stephanie was born and raised in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Her grandparents were among the first Chinese immigrants to go to Brazil. Being part of an immigrant Chinese family greatly influenced Stephanie’s life, teaching her the value of family & community, and the importance of investing in her education.

Her family embraced Christianity a few years after settling in, and Stephanie was raised in that community, where she eventually met her husband.

While attending Engineering school in Brazil, Stephanie had the opportunity of going to France, living there for three years to study and work as an intern in Engineering at L’Oréal. However, she later realized this was not her desired career.

Right after graduation, she worked for a strategic consulting firm for three years before it was acquired by Deloitte. After some of her colleagues moved to Peninsula, a Brazilian family office, she embraced the challenge of switching careers and exploring the PE/VC ecosystem. She spent eight years there, gaining exposure to various businesses, mainly in the retail, health and education sectors. On the investor side, she found it fascinating to learn about different businesses being built. Venture Capital seemed faster-paced and innovative, and she was inspired by the brilliant people she met and the problem-solving she observed.

In 2022, Stephanie joined Qualcomm Ventures, with the desire to focus on VC and work for a leading technology company with a top global venture capital arm. She was drawn to the company’s reputation for fostering innovation and its commitment to supporting cutting-edge technology startups.

1. What is your role at Qualcomm Ventures, and what led you into venture capital?

During my time at Peninsula, I developed a strong affinity for private equity and venture capital investment. I had the opportunity to engage with a diverse range of industries and support execution of growth strategies across different teams.

Venture capital was very captivating as it allowed me to work in a very intellectually stimulating environment and the privilege of interacting with brilliant people. My desire to focus more exclusively on the tech aspect of the industry led me to Qualcomm Ventures. Recognizing the potential of this opportunity, I joined their team.

Currently, I am a part of the Americas division where I serve as the Director of Investments for Latin America. Our current portfolio consists of ten active companies from this region, and we are actively seeking out new investment prospects, aligned with our areas of expertise including AI, auto, IoT, and enterprise & cloud.

2. Tell us something interesting that people might not know about you.

One profoundly life-altering experience in the past year was becoming a mother. This transformative journey has imparted invaluable insights about myself, influencing my approach to work and the reasons behind why I work. Now, when I look for new investments, I find that my perspective has shifted. I now more consciously evaluate the long-term impact of potential ventures.

This experience has also shown how important relationships and support are—both of which are also important for startups.

3. What investment areas do you find most exciting, and how do you see them evolving in the next year and beyond?

I am, of course, focusing a lot of my time on AI, and on its impact in the Latin American context. I see huge opportunity in many AI use cases, now solving local problems that were too complex or were not economically viable before. Take for instance computer vision. With AI models running partially on the device, there is an opportunity to build cost efficient solutions to many different verticals: from industrial inspection to public security, from precision agriculture to retail productivity.

I also see the potential of AI-first vertical SaaS solutions in specific domains. Legal tech has been around for a while, but now with LLMs supporting data ingestion, content generation and user experience, there is a stronger case to build deep, meaningful tools for this segment, specially targeting SMBs.

The Latin American market is a huge market on its own. I am excited to see (and invest) in solutions that are solving challenging local problems, with the bonus of also believing in the potential for these solutions to go global.

4. Tell us about a recent investment and why you decided to invest.

My latest investment was in a company called Aravita, an AI-powered solution helping supermarkets to reduce fresh food waste. My past experience gave me a deep understanding of the retail sector, particularly regarding the challenges of waste management. Fresh food is a complex category, considering the many variables that impact its demand, supply and lifecycle. Moreover, maintaining a well-stocked and effectively managed fresh food section is of strategic importance for retailers, as it is a key factor in attracting customers to physical stores. In this context, having access to more data intelligence and analytics is crucial, and Aravita aims to provide just that, by gathering available data, integrating the client’s workflows and delivering returns.

I believe Aravita is uniquely positioned to succeed in this endeavor primarily because of the founders, Marco Perlman, Aline Neves de Azevedo and Bruno Schrappe. Their expertise and track record give me confidence that they can solve this complex problem.

5. What’s a practical piece of advice for founders and entrepreneurs? 

From my experience with founders and my own personal path, I have seen immense value in investing in self-knowledge. It is very impactful to recognize your strengths and weaknesses. A mentor once told me to be aware of my weaknesses and work on them to an average level, but really double down and over invest in my strengths as the way to differentiate myself. Every founder is unique, and if you understand where you need help and truly excel where you are good, I believe you will find yourself on a winning path. Also, bonus: there is great value for teams to go through part of this self-knowledge journey together.