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…

Original data for this post taken from an article in Korean on Under The Radar, with additional editing from Hugh Yoon and Nathan Millard: Under The Radar, a prominent IT and Startup focused blog, recently published a top 10 list of venture backed enterprises in Korea. Not surprisingly, Kakao was placed number one in the list by a wide margin. In Korea, unlike most other venture ecosystems around the world, success is…

Smilegate, Korea-based maker of online games, has just announced a $112 million buyout of 20% of Sundaytoz’ stock in a move that makes the company behind global success, Crossfire, the largest stake holder. Smilegate is one of the most successful players in the Korean online gaming industry. For the last last two consecutive years Smilegate has been the proud owner / developer of the world’s highest grossing online game. Crossfire, with revenues of…

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…

! 다운로드 2000만건, !! 일일 사용자 1000만명, !!! 동시 접속자 300만명, 2012년 9월 기준으로 월 매출은 100억원에 근접했다고 한다. 이는 국내 모바일 게임 역사상 최대 규모의 성과이기도 하다.