경영진 VS. 투자자 (3)   C. 경영진의 책임, 이사회의 책임 알버트가 투자한 후 벌써 다섯번째 이사회이다. 마크는 회사의 2011년 상반기 실적에 대해 프리젠테이션을 하면서, 향후 사업 방향 및 전략에 대해서 설명하였다. 이사회에 둘러 앉은 투자자인 잭, 제이콥, 알버트는 그다지 얼굴이 밝지 못하다. Series C를 $20M 펀딩한 이후, 생각보다는 더딘 속도로 회사의 트래픽이 증가하였고, 월정액 방식의 가입자 수익모델도 생각만큼은 수익을 창출하지 못하고 있다. 그래도 긍정적인 점은 BeeOrBug의 트래픽 규모 자체는 나쁘지는 않았고, 주요 파이낸셜…

K-Cube Ventures invests $500M won in Mobile Beauty Content Company “Seed Paper” Seed paper shares practical beauty tips for its users through its mobile lifestyle content platform. The service is linked KakaoTalk Plus Friend, which is a premium service from Korea’s top mobile messaging platform, KakaoTalk. Well-known experts in the field of beauty and cosmetics, including Hong Cha, Saem-Mul Jung, and Hyun-Cheung Woo, provide practical tips through the service, which includes tips…

Date: Tuesday, October 1st, 2013 Location: COEX Conference Hall Room #318, Seoul, Korea Schedule:  1:30pm-6:00pm 1:30pm-2:45pm  Intro and 1st half of demo+pitch 2:45pm-3:00pm  Break 3:00pm-3:50pm  2nd half of demo+pitch 3:50pm-4:00pm  Break 4:00pm-5:00pm  M&A: Inside View 5:00pm-6:00pm  Networking Presenting Companies StyleWiki iBabyBox MangoPlate Zoyi HeyBread Lateral DesignPlusD TrakInvest Short Program (M&A: Inside View) Get the insiders’ view of the M&A process from entrepreneurs who have gone through it.  Learn about what led to their decision to sell,…

Samsung is clearly taking its drive for innovation seriously, in order to compete with the likes of Apple and to cement its position as global tech / electronics leader. After spending $1Bn on a new innovation center in Silicon Valley, the tech giant is now set to introduce a radical new work policy in Korea, to spur creative thinking. Samsung will adopt a four-hour flexible working system company-wide on the condition that…

  For a number of years Korea has been firmly established as a global production base for core display materials. This is partly due to intense competition in the industry between the two domestic heavyweights LG and Samsung. Chinese display makers are making aggressive investments in the sector, but investments in the materials and components for next-generation display are still concentrated in Korea, and China has some way to catch up the…

As Korean President Park Geun-hye pushes to promote fair competition in the Korean economy (currently dominated by a small number of family-run conglomerates), the country’s number one internet company, Naver, has been coming under fire again for allegedly abusing its power.   Startup “Memo This” developed a service that allows users to stick memos on any website for use by anyone who vistits the site at a later date. The theory is…

LG Display and Samsung Display Co. have settled their longstanding quarrel over their display technology as the world’s two biggest display makers face growing competition from Chinese rivals and an industry slump, industry sources have claimed. LG Display and Samsung Display have been locked in a legal battle over organic light-emitting diode (OLED) and liquid-crystal display (LCD) technology following probes into an alleged technology leak from Samsung Display to LG Display last…

Korea was the first nation where online gaming was a lucrative career. And, having lived in Korea for five years, I have seen the huge potential in the online gaming market here, which attracts gamers to “PC Rooms”, like the one below, 24 hours a day. But, surprisingly, Korean produced games are now losing the fight against foreign competition. It has been claimed recently that Korea is losing its reputation as an…

경영진 VS. 투자자   B. 이사회 전경 (Board Meeting) 투자후 첫 이사회날이다. 알버트는 이미 몇일전에 이사회 자료를 받아서 미리 검토해 보았다. 투자이후 처음으로 회사 현황을 이사회 자료 형태로 보는 것이기 때문에, 투자후 지난 두어달 동안의 경과에 대해 꼼꼼하게 살펴 보면서, 원래 투자할때 생각했던 것과 진행현황을 비교해 보았다. 회사의 트래픽은 예상대로 빠른 속도로 늘고 있었는데, 전체 트래픽 보다는 트래픽의 퀄러티에 대해 보다 신경이 쓰였다. 트래픽 자체는 신규 트래픽의 영향으로 전반적으로 증가하고 있는데, 기존…

기술 동향에 관심 있는 이들은 각종 미디어, 전문가들의 서적, 연구소의 보고서 등을 통해 최신 트랜드를 파악할 수 있다. 동향을 알자고 하는 것은 결국 그 흐름에 따른 미래를 먼저 가늠해 보자는 것이기에 과거 트랜드라고 불리운 것들 중에는 정말로 대세가 된 것이 있고, 아직은 그 기술이 도래하지 않았거나 완전히 헛짚은 것들도 분명 있을 것이다. 다가오고 있는 미래 동향을 노치고 싶지 않다면 앞서 언급한 것처럼 책과 보고서(삼성경제연구소나 정보통신연구원 등의)를 꾸준히 읽거나 Techcrunch나 beSUCCESS 같은 테크…

Editor’s note: 프로그래머이자 해커인 박상민님이 폴 그레이엄Paul Graham의 에세이 ’해커와 화가’ 번역을 총 5회에 걸쳐 게재합니다. Y combinator를 창업한 폴 그레이엄은 Dropbox, Reddit, Airbnb등의 스타트업을 키워낸 대가로, 투자자이면서도 뛰어난 프로그래머이며 수필가로도 명성을 떨치고 있습니다. (원문 보기) 미술처럼 대부분 소프트웨어는 사람들에게 보이는 (쓰이는)것이 목적이다. 그래서 화가처럼 해커도 “동감”할줄 알아야 작품을 만들수 있다. 사용자의 관점에서 사물을 바라볼때 작품이 나온다. 어려서부터 나는 다른 사람의 관점에서 사물을 바라보도록 교육받았다. 실제로 이게 의미했던건 내가 원하는 것 보다는 주변의 사람들이 원하는…

On September 16, the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP) opened the ‘Born Global Startups’ (forgive the slightly dodgy name) project at the Future Global Business Start-up Support Center in Seoul. The twenty selected teams, three accelerators and two business incubation centers participated in the event. The aim is to support startups with strategy and to attract investment. The program will also finance three Korean incubators including Venture Square (teamed…

KT has recently announced that it will launch a Korea-Japan Wi-Fi automatic roaming service. The service will enable KT customers to use NTT DoCoMo’s Wi-Fi network if they go to Japan, with the same deal reciprocated for NTT DoCoMo’s clients in Korea. To date users have had to enter a user ID and a password to log on to wireless networks overseas. The automatic roaming service, however, will allow users to enjoy…

  반도체의 기하급수적 발전, 그리고 지금 우리가 생각하는 성능을 높이는 방법은 무엇일까? 21세기인 지금 IT의 기술력은 날이 갈수록 좋아지고 있다. 이 때문에 더 작고 더 높은 성능을 뽐내는 칩이 개발되고 있다. 하지만 기술이 그렇게 좋지 않던, 에니악이 막 출시된 1950년대, 성능을 높이는 방법으로는 그저 부품을 많이 꽂을 수밖에 없었다. 2세대 컴퓨터인 CDC1604는 진공관보다 성능은 좋고 더 작은 부품인 트랜지스터만 2만 5천 개, 다이오드가 무려 10만 개나 들어갔다. 이런 기술력으로 만약 항공모함이나 로켓…

The Background For those who don’t know it, the internet situation in South Korea is very different from what you might expect. Most impressively, Google, only claims around a 2% share of the search market. So who services this population of 50M, one of the most connected and tech savvy in the World? Naver, a subsidiary of Korea’s largest internet company NHN Corp, has controlled over 70% of the Korean search market…

Cooliris will become the world’s first developer to integrate the Baidu MyCloud API. Cooliris, Silicon Valley’s leader in immersive media experiences on mobile and desktop, and Baidu, China’s largest search engine, today announce a partnership to offer a killer next-generation media experience on mobile phones in worlds largest smartphone market. With today’s release of the Cooliris app for iPhone and iPad, users of Baidu MyCloud, Baidu’s personal cloud storage service with over 100…

Samsung has announced that in October they will be releasing a new ‘Noum’ model smartphone handset with a curved screen. This demonstrates Samsung’e drive to become not only the world’s top handset maker, but also the most innovative. Curved displays are an early stage in screen evolution which is shifting to bendable or foldable designs, eventually allowing mobile and wearable gadgets to take on new forms that could radically change the high-end…

At the beGlobal 2013 Tech Startup Conference, ten Korean Tech startups pitched their companiesin competition for the attention and capital ofjudges and investors. The ten startups that participated were Korbit (Bitcoin exchange & platform), SEWORKS (mobile security), KnowRe (online adaptive learning program), Gist (news aggregation/summarization), Shakr (video creation), Smile Family (mobile application for mothers), IDINCU (mobile market research), Cultstory (mobile travel and tourism application), Flitto (social media translation platform) and VCNC (private…

LG Electronics recently announced that it will start selling a large screen “phablet”, Vu 3, through three major telecom companies starting from September 27. The Vu 3 is the third in LG Electronics’ Vu series following Optimus Vu and Optimus Vu 2, each released in March and September 2012. With a 5.2-inch screen that has a 4:3 ratio, the Vu 3 is designed to make it easier for users to enjoy the…

Korean Internet users are adopting mobile faster than any other country in the world and the number of mobile users of key Internet services like Facebook and YouTube is increasing explosively. According to Facebook 90% of 11 million Korean users who access Facebook at least once a month (MAU) access their Facebook accounts on mobile devices. This figure is far higher than the global Facebook average of 71%. The global Facebook MAU…