Naldo today announced its Series A investment from Softbank Ventures Korea and Qualcomm Ventures. After an initial angel funding in 2013 this is the first major investment for Naldo. Funding will allow for faster scaling along sales, marketing and product-development. Currently Naldo’s service is available in and around the Seoul metropolitan area in South Korea. Naldo provides immediate delivery of any item that needs to get delivered within a maximum time-frame of…

Over the last year collaboration between the startup ecosystems in North and South Asia has seen greatly increased velocity as resources come together to enable the rising tide in Asian entrepreneurship to accelerate. And in recent days Joyful Frog Digital Incubator (JFDI), an accelerator based in Singapore, and the Banks Foundation for Young Entrepreneurs (Banks Foundation) a community centre for Korean entrepreneurs in Seoul, have announced a partnership. This formal collaboration aims to…

Aviram Jenik is a rare entrepreneurial breed in Korea. He has built and exited two global companies and his third venture, Beyond Security, is working steadily towards an IPO in the US. In his free time Aviram makes Angel Investments in and coaches Korean entrepreneurs. I caught up with him recently to learn about his experiences as an Angel Investor in Korea. Disclaimer: Ok, before you think you’ve missed something, Aviram is…

Investing in Korean startups can be a tough job for Venture Capitalists. Despite amazing growth over the last two to three in the venture ecosystem, we will have to wait for a further five years or more to see the fruits of this second push for a creative economy in Korea over the last ten years. As we know, VCs base their earning potential on few successful investments that can generate enormous…

Within two weeks of joining Shakr, a Seoul and San Francisco-based video creation startup, I was on a 4:00 p.m. flight to San Francisco to represent the company at Google’s annual conference for it’s biggest advertising partners. The plane touched down at 9:00 a.m., I went into the bathroom at the airport to put on a suit, grabbed a “you might need two hands for that” sized black coffee, and went straight…

Demoday, a web platform for Korean Startups, recently came up with a list of 100 hot Korean startups in 2013, and we thought this might be a great chance to write an introduction to the Korean startup world. Every week, we will introduce you to 10 startup companies that got into the list in alphabetical order. Here’s our list for this week: 4:33 Creative Lab (Gaming) Key People: Jun-Mo Kwon (CEO), Tae-hwan…

As well as boasting an impressive speaker line up when it comes to VCs, beGLOBAL also feature some very interesting entrepreneurs and business people, two of which are Saeju Jeong, Co-CEO at Noom and Suk Park, Co-Founder of DramaFever. With both being born in Korea and currently based in New York, they have a lot in common. But the biggest common denominator is their success. Since the age of 19, Saeju Jeong…

How do you pitch, and then manage the relationship with your investors? You cashed the check, now what? Managing the relationship with your investors is an important skill that new entrepreneurs have to learn. Join us at beGLOBAL for a lively discussion about how to navigate the sometimes-complicated relationship between the idea and the money. That is the topic that will be discussed at the Korean LP’s/Funds investing in Silicon Valley Panel…

Jørn Lyseggen is the scrappy Norwegian entrepreneur who founded Meltwater News in 2001 with only $15,000. Meltwater News has since grown into the Meltwater we know today as a global leader in online intelligence with more than 50 offices, 800+ employees, and more than 16,000 global clients. As CEO, Jørn leads the expansion of Meltwater with new ventures in the Software as a Service (SaaS) market. As an entrepreneur and patent holder…

There are some seriously heavyweight VCs at the beGLOBAL conference in Palo Alto, September 13. One highlight will surely be the Seed Funds Going Global Panel, featuring top names such as David Lee (SV Angel), Jeff Clavier (SoftTech Ventures), Aydin Senkut (Felicis Ventures), Christine Tsai (500 Startups) and Sarah Lacy (PandoDaily – moderator). The Line up for this panel is so impressive that we have divided the introduction in two parts. Yesterday…

There are some seriously heavyweight VCs at the beGLOBAL conference in Palo Alto, September 13. One highlight will surely be the Seed Funds Going Global Panel, featuring top names such as David Lee (SV Angel), Jeff Clavier (SoftTech Ventures), Aydin Senkut (Felicis Ventures), and Christine Tsai (500 Startups), all moderated by the edgy Sarah Lacy, CEO of PandoDaily. The Line up for this panel is so impressive that we will divide the…

  Who better to discuss current & future investment opportunities in Asia than three venture capitalists based in The US, with Korean roots? Eric Kim, Tae HeaNahm and Han Kim all have extensive knowledge about investing in Asia/Korea and have many success stories resulting from their combined portfolios in the region. They will be sharing their insights on a panel discussion at beGLOBAL. Tae HeaNahm is a founding general partner of Storm…

With Asian messaging apps battling it out for the global market and with messaging apps now being considered a threat to traditional Internet giants like Facebook and Google (especially amongst teens), it is very exiting for us at beSUCCESS to present beGLOBAL speaker Jeanie Han, CEO of Line for Europe and the Americas. Dr. Jeanie Han, who was recruited out of Paramount Pictures, is in charge of running LINE in the United…

Large corporates, particularly Korean large corporates, have often been charged with the slogan that, “big companies don’t innovate”. That’s a statement Marc Shedroff, VP at Samsung’s Open Innovation Center in Silicon Valley, disagrees with. Samsung, which now has a $1Bn R&D operation in the heart of Silicon Valley, is pushing hard to convert new ideas into innovative products in an increasingly tough market (primarily phones & tablets). The company spends over $10…

The Drapers, one of the most exiting families in venture capital, will join moderator John Nahm from Strong Ventures on stage at beGLOBAL, in a 30 minute panel. The panel, which comprises the vintage business man Bill Draper, “the creator of viral marketing,” Tim Draper and up-and-coming VC Adam Draper, will analyze their global success and discuss the future of global tech investing. Over the course of a half-century, the Draper clan…

beSUCCESS caught up with Bernard Moon to learn more about the mentorship process at the Sparklabs accelerator. Bernard is Co-founder & CEO of Vidquik, a web conferencing & sales solutions platform. Previously he has worked with the Lunsford Group, GoingOn Networks and iRG, a leading boutique investment bank in Asia, where he focused on TMT companies.

A whirlwind networking day with networking extraordinaire, James Jung (Founder and CEO, beSUCCESS).

Daniel Tudor is a British journalist and first-time author based in Seoul, Korea. His book Korea: The Impossible Country will be released in November 2012. We caught up with Daniel to learn more about the book.

Eunse Lee talks with a VC – Mr. James Kwon, a senior manager at Qualcomm Ventures on building a successful start-up in Korea.

Gobann is an online marketplace, based in Indonesia for entrepreneurs, freelancers, and even professionals, to trade creative talents at a fixed price of Rupiah 50,000. Shawn Byun who was born in Korea and was brought up in Indonesia answers a few questions about their entrepreneurial venture. Shawn has also co-founded an application developing team called Tangible Idea that has developed South Korea’s first mentoring application, MEEPLE, derived from MEEting and PLacE (or peoPLE).