*Remember folks, Wednesdays are your ‘Weekly News’ day! Cymera Tops 20mil. In Downloads So Cymera is kind of a big deal now – they just topped 20 mil. in downloads. We wrote about this earlier (maybe a week ago). On May 13, Cymera passed the 10 million mark in downloads outside of the Korean peninsula, proving popular in Thailand and Taiwan. SK Communications SNS affiliate said that the number of downloads recently…

Good morning everyone, here are some news articles we picked out for you this morning. 1. Coinbase Leads Charge In Bitcoin’s Consumerization Some interesting perspectives on Bitcoins. Bitcoin (BTC) is a cryptocurrency first described in 2008 by a pseudonymous developer ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ who called it a peer-to-peer, electronic cash system that can be transferred through a computer/smartphone without an intermediate financial institution. (TechCrunch) 2. If you’re disappointed with big data, you’re not…

Today’s Events: 1. Jump Together! Running Mentoring Session (Kor) A great mentoring program for young startups, university students and other interested people. Vie for synergy, comrades! 2. The 5th DrinkEntrepreneurs Event Once a month, DrinkEntrepreneurs offers a relaxed environment for driven and motivated entrepreneurs to meet and exchange over a drink and music. This event differs from many networking socials having no format, name tags, business booths, or stuffy environments. It’s free (drinks available at the…

According to the Korean Financial Supervisory Service, SundayToz, the developers of AniPang, will be joining the KOSDAQ (Korean Securities Dealers Automated Quotations trading board), following an acquisition by Hana Green Special Purpose Acquisition Co. SundayToz is the developer of Kakao’s AniPang (adequately named “the national mobile game of Korea”). They are known as the company that literally ‘opened a new chapter for Mobile Games’ – and they made 23.8bil. KRW (approx. 23.8 million…

Meet KnowRe. “Your new digital teacher’s aide”… and the Winner of Gap App Challenge! KnowRe is humbly describes itself as an ‘educational technology company’ that develops innovative online adaptive service for mathematics, but I disagree – there is so much more to it than what meets the eye. They were listed by TechCrunch, GigaOm, TechwireAsia, The Next Web and VentureBeat (just to name a few!) as one of the hottest Korean startups…

1. SoftBank Capital Raises $50M To Invest Exclusively In New York Startups Back in February, SoftBank Capital raised $250mil. focused on helping established tech startups break into Asia. As of this morning, they have just announced that they’ve raised $50 million that they plan to invest entirely into early-stage New York startups in hopes that it’ll boost the startup ecosystem there with a few big wins come out of the city already. (TechCrunch) 2. Waze mapping app gets a little more…

Good morning everybody! June is the last month for Q2 – hope you are all satisfied with the results you’re getting. Here are some beSUCCESS-approved readings for this morning: 1. The New “Handmade” (Part Three) This series from TechCrunch is all about 3D printers. Consumer interest in 3D printing is booming, thanks to affordable printers. But 3D printing is fueling artists’ creativity, too, and turning your consumers into artists. The series tells you about 3D-printing technology, the artists…

Korea is still seeing some immense growth. According to the Korean Venture Capital Association, venture capital firms in Korea raised $191 million in the first quarter this year, up slightly from $189  million in 2012. Interestingly, there is a general slowdown in the U.S. startup scene – U.S. venture capital firms raised $4.1 billion from 35 funds during the first quarter of this year according to the National Venture Capital Association (this is about a 34%…

Earlier today we talked about the rise of Korean startups… and what’s a better example than KnowRe? KnowRe is the recent Winner of Gap App Challenge (1st Place) 2013, Grand Prize Winner at Global K-Startup 2012, and Winner of Plug and Play Tech Center at beLAUNCH 2012? In much excitement, we interviewed the Co-Founder and Vice-President of KnowRe, Seojoon (Simon) Kim who was incredibly humble about this accomplishment. You can read our…

This Week’s Startup – Woowa Bros.   Woowa Brothers <Baedal Minjok> <Official Website Link> “If you have ever been to South Korea, what is the most surprising part ?” Most of answers to this questions are predictable; foods, people, culture, and nature. But there is one answer unexpected; food delivery service. Food delivery service can be seen almost everywhere in South Korea bringing convenient, city life-style. With one easy phone call, you…

Good thing the Koreans went for the fiber early. South Korea dominates the top lists when it comes to broadband, according to latest edition of Akamai’s State of the Internet report for the three months ending December 31, 2012. The quarterly State of the Internet report puts the South Korean city of Daegu at the top of the 100 fastest cities. Here are some highlights from Akamai’s official press release: Global On…

We thought it’s about time we wrote about the U.S. National Security Agency’s PRISM program, the latest phenomenon around the world today – and yet, it’s old news, because information is and has always been the ultimate power. This issue is quite divisive – some people care, some people don’t, some people think you ought to care. What do you think about the PRISM issue? What is PRISM? PRISM is an electronic…

This Week’s Startup – Jelly Bus Inc.   JellyBus Inc. <Picsplay Pro> <Official Web Link> Anyone can make awesome photos with us! Whether you are an unskilled user or a photo experts, Jelly Bus assures that you can make a stunning photo by this photo editing app service “Picsplay pro”. As it is called an Image processing engine, it provides a basic features and cutting-edge technologies. For example, its newest HDR functions…

Noom Walk is a free pedometer app that counts your steps and shares your progress with friends. Noom Walk is based on software that collects sensor data from the user’s mobile phone. Instead of relying on expensive wearable accessories, Noom Walk utilizes the smartphones users already own. In the future, Noom may explore integration with wearable devices, but for now Noom believes smartphones are sufficient. “We believe that smartphones can do 90%…

  KT Will Spend $2.65B Upgrading Network And Create Jobs Remember how KT said they set up a fund of USD 132 million by 2017 to help smaller and mid-sized firms in Korea earlier on this year? Well, according to Yonhap News yesterday, they will spend KRW 3 trillion (approximately USD 2.65 billion). KT is more ambitious than we thought. That means that the south Korean telco is spending approximately half of the USD 5.3 billion…

Facebook’s Co-Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg will visit Korea at the end of this month, according to Yonhap News. Seeing that Bill Gates and Larry Page visited Korea recently, it seems likely that Zuckerberg, too, will discuss the future of IT with the Park administration. People are speculating that he will visit Cheongwadae (the presidential residence in Korea, or the ‘blue house’) at the end of June. He will be spending about…

Bon Angels Early Stage VC & Veteran Pacemaker There is a visionary behind such rapid growth of Korean Startups.  Bon Angles Venture Partners, as a first ever investment company specialized in startups established in 2010, has been engaged in partnering with early stage IT companies and made a great success. What makes Bon Agels different from other investment companies, not to mention about their specialties, is a communication even before the company’s…

We wrote previously about the current situation in the South Korean startup ecosystem. We said that the global startup capital is declining whereas the Korean venture world is seeing more fundings, more startups, and more enthusiasm. The rise of startups in Korea really started with KakaoTalk i n 2010, and since then we have seen $191 million US dollars raised in Korea (in 2013, up from $189 mil in 2012), and increase…

Business is a zero-sum game. Collaboration is a plus-sum game. Everyone seems to be talking about “The Sharing Economy” – everybody literally gets a share of your meal, and vice versa. Take the Korean startup, Zipbob. So: Forget zero-sum games; people are all about “collaborative consumption” now. And the people in Asia, especially Korea, are rising up. Wait. Collaborative consumption? Short answer: commercial arrangements and transactions in which participants share and access…

Singapore, 12 June 2013 — Last week saw JFDI.Asia field seven new and two returning startups at the Demo Day which marked the end of its first seed accelerator program for 2013. Over 100 investor meetings were set up in the hour following the event and, this week, reaction from investors has flowed in with some prepared to nominate the startups that caught their eye. The JFDI.Asia 2013A Demo Day was sponsored…