He spent a decade inside the medtech giants learning exactly what slows a catheter down. Then he left to build the whole device himself.
Most device shops pick a lane. Min picked three - neurovascular, coronary, and electrophysiology - and decided his company would design, prototype, test, and manufacture every one of them without handing the work off to anyone else.
That is the strange specificity of Nventric, the Arcadia, California company Sungwoo Min founded in 2019. The pitch is not a single hero product. It is a promise to take a medical device from a sketch on a whiteboard all the way to a volume production line, with the regulatory paperwork handled in between. Revascularization catheters that navigate the brain's smallest vessels. Drug-eluting stents. Ablation catheters for heart-rhythm work. Hemostasis valves and the unglamorous accessories that make the marquee devices usable. Nventric builds the catalog and builds it for other companies too, as a contract development and manufacturing partner.
It is a deliberately wide bet, and it comes from a narrow conviction: that the friction in medical devices lives in the handoffs. The R&D team that does not talk to manufacturing. The marketing plan written before the engineers know what is buildable. The regulatory surprise that lands six months too late. Min watched all of it from the inside at two of the biggest names in the business, and Nventric is, in a sense, his correction.
The company runs ISO 13485 certified operations on two continents, with a footprint in both the United States and South Korea. Roughly thirty-some people. A founder who is also a named inventor on the patents the company holds. Min is not the kind of CEO who left the lab behind - his name sits on filings for mechanical thrombectomy devices, the kind designed to pull a clot out of a stroke patient before the damage is permanent.
Push the boundaries of medical technology by developing innovative, high-quality devices that meet unmet clinical needs and redefine standards in vascular disease treatment.
A clean arc on paper, an unusual one in practice. Min did the rare thing of crossing from engineering into marketing and back into building.
The jump from R&D Group Lead to Global Product Manager in Marketing is not a step many engineers take. Min collected both sides of the device business - what is buildable and what is wanted - before he ever ran his own company.
Four and a half years running R&D programs at Johnson & Johnson taught the scale game: how big organizations move, where they stall, and what a smaller, faster shop could do differently.
Nventric was the thesis made real - an end-to-end partner small enough to move and deep enough to ship, spanning the US and South Korea from day one.
The point is breadth without thinning out. Each line targets some of the hardest anatomy in the body - the brain's smallest vessels, the beating heart, the coronary tree.
Revascularization devices, distal access and aspiration catheters, balloon guiding catheters - tools built to navigate complex vascular anatomy in stroke intervention.
Drug-eluting stents, balloon catheters, guide extension catheters, scoring balloon catheters for coronary artery disease.
Ablation and diagnostic catheters for heart-rhythm disorders.
Hemostasis valves and PICC lines - the supporting cast that makes the headline devices work.
Concept through commercialization: R&D, prototyping, testing, manufacturing, and regulatory support under one ISO 13485 roof.
OEM and CDRMO work - Nventric builds other companies' devices, not just its own.
Named inventor on multiple US patents for mechanical thrombectomy devices - including filings listing co-inventors Don Quy Ngo and Jiyoung Min.
Grew Nventric from a 2019 startup into a roughly thirty-person design-and-manufacturing firm operating across two continents.
Stood up ISO 13485 certified operations spanning the United States and South Korea.
Led R&D programs at Johnson & Johnson and held both R&D and global marketing roles at Abbott Vascular.
Nventric reported Series B financing, with total funding around $12.16M as of early 2024.
Active at industry gatherings including MEDICA 2025 - the founder still shows up where the devices do.
A founder is rarely the sum of a resume. A few details that say more than a title.
A clot is a design problem. Min treats the hardest anatomy in the body - the brain's smallest vessels - as an engineering brief, not an excuse. His thrombectomy patents are the proof.
Two Mins on the patent. His thrombectomy filings list a fellow Min - Jiyoung Min - among the co-inventors.
Arcadia to Seoul. He runs a medical device company on two continents from a base in suburban Los Angeles County.
The aim is a global, end-to-end partner that designs, develops, and builds precision vascular devices for the problems other shops avoid - from stroke to the coronary tree - and improves outcomes wherever they are used.