NHN재팬 대표를 맡아 일본에서 1조 매출 신화를 쓰고, 코코네(Cocone) 라는 소셜 미디어 회사를 일본에서 창업한 천양현 대표가 이희우 전 IDG벤처스코리아 대표 및 김동환 전 소프트뱅크벤처스 이사와 함께 ‘코그니티브 인베스트먼트(Cognitive Investment)’를 공동 창업하고 본격적으로 한·일 중심 벤처투자 업무를 시작한다. 천양현 대표는 카카오 김범수 의장과 2000년 ‘한게임 재팬’을 창업하고 2009년까지 NHN재팬 대표, NHN CGO(글로벌 게임사업 총괄사장), NHN재팬 회장 등을 맡아 ‘NHN재팬’을 일본 최고의 인터넷 서비스 회사로 키운 인물이다. 이후 2009년 NHN에서의 인터넷 서비스 경험을…

초기기업 투자전문 벤처캐피털인 본엔젤스벤처파트너스가 ‘본엔젤스페이스메이커펀드2’ 결성에 맞춰 강석흔·송인애 각자 대표 체제로 변경하고, 김길연·김창하·박지영·전태연·마크테토(Mark Tetto) 등을 새롭게 파트너로 영입한다고 26일 발표했다.  내년으로 창업 10주년을 맞는 본엔젤스는 그동안 대내외 업무를 총괄해 온 강석흔·송인애 파트너를 각자 대표로 선임한다. 장병규 대표는 사임 후 파트너로서 투자 업무에 집중할 계획이다. 그 뿐만 아니라, 창업과 인수·합병을 경험했던 벤처인들과 IT 벤처 전문가들을 파트너로 영입해 스타트업 투자전문 벤처캐피털로서의 입지를 강화하게 됐다. 글로벌 모바일게임사인 컴투스를 창업한 박지영 전 대표를 비롯해 엔써즈 김길연,…

Altos Ventures, headquartered in Silicon Valley, has invested $2 million USD in Hyperconnect, the developer of live time video communication technology and the service host for the video messenger ‘Azar.’ Hyperconnect has developed a very distinct client/server technology stack for WebRTC based real-time video/voice communication. It is very secure and reliable for various settings in 200 countries with very high quality video chat. The technology is built on P2P so the management…

‘Timeline Dungeon’ developer NOVN have announced that they recently received $500k USD from NC Soft. As NC Soft expands its business interest from game and contents to a range of other entertainment areas, this investment will enable NOVN to release Timeline Dungeon in January 2015. This investment follows up a seed round of funding from ‘The Ventures’. NOVN’s Timeline Dungeon plans to open a new genre with their first title. It is…

Jae-ho Choi CEO of Drama & Company has announced that their business card organizing app ‘Remember’ has secured $2 million USD from Daekyo Investment, CyberAgent Ventures, and Capstone Partners. This is the second round of funding for the company this year, after Capstone Partners invested $1 million USD. The additional funding will help them prepare a stable foundation for ongoing service development and management. Unlike the previous OCR based business card organizing…

  As announced in Sparklabs Bi-Monthly Review, Korean startup Jandi confirmed that it has raised an angel round of nearly US$2 million, co-led by Softbank Ventures and Cherubic Ventures. Jandi is a business communication platform for PC, iOS, and Android devices that allows teams to securely and instantly communicate while also easily being able to share files, search through past messages, and more. There are, of course, other apps that address these concerns,…

After three years in operation, NFLabs, Korea’s most promising Big Data startup has raised series A funding from Big Basin Capital, Bon Angels and Coolidge Corner investment. The funding of $1.5 million USD will be primarily used to bring the startups big data analytics and visualization software to a global audience. NFLabs CEO Sejun Ra explained, “the investment will really boost our expansion to North America. We will focus on speeding up…

[This article was originally published on Forbes] I was in Asia last week to attend a Demo Day for startups that participated in a two month acceleration program through DEV Korea where I serve as a principal. These companies had split their time between New York and Seoul in order to gain a global perspective that could be applied to their ventures while they were still in a formative stage. This is…

K Cube Ventures recently announced a $700,000 investment into mobile game developer ‘A-33 Studio.’ With this investment A-33 Studio will focus on ramping up their mobile FPS game production and aim to be ready to release their first title by end of next year. The title is named ‘Project S’ for now, and is an ambitious plan to maximize online mobile FPS game experience by integrating a fully optimized user interface along…

Based in Seoul, Chinese language education company CHINADA have secured $1 million USD from Soft Bank Ventures and Coolidge Corner Investment. Their digital educational program ‘Chinatan’ is unlike other typical systems that focus on grammar and reading. Instead it is aimed towards improving conversational skills. It simulates real life situations, such as markets, restaurants, university campus, hotels, etc. This allows students to experience day to day situations experienced by locals. To build…

“We want to be the Amazon of Korea. We are the largest online retailer here, and we’re one of the most well-funded tech companies in Korea.” CEO of Coupang, Bom Kim in an interview with Forbes To accelerate this growth Coupang has just announced another huge funding round, worth $300 million USD, from BlackRock Private Equity Partners. This follows fast on the heals of another $100 million USD round led around five months…

According to the Korea Small Business Institute, small and medium enterprises running their own research institutes suffered from a technology outflow worth $5.6 billion between 2011 and 2013. The amount was equivalent to 58% of their R&D expenditures for the same period. The sales decrement caused by the tech leak was $2.27 million on average, or around 20% of annual sales. However, despite knowledge of the problem, most companies have not make…

This is part two of this story. Part 1 here In 2010 when Bong-jin Kim left’ Naver’ (Korea’s primary online search portal), he had no idea about Venture Capital or ‘Exit’. Additionally, he had no interest in global expansion. He built his startup to focus on solving ‘small issues that Koreans face in their daily lives’. Yesturday we discussed how he raised his first three rounds of funding. Today we look at how…

In 2010 when Bong-jin Kim left’ Naver’ (Korea’s primary online search portal), he had no idea about Venture Capital or ‘Exit’. Additionally, he had no interest in global expansion. He built his startup to focus on solving ‘small issues that Koreans face in their daily lives’. That is how Baedal Minjok started. But recently his ‘startup’ raised $36 million USD from Goldman Sachs. He concluded, “if a person like me who had…

eBook store ‘Ridibooks’ just announced an $8 million investment from Neoplux, Atinum Investment, Company K Partners, and Mirae Asset Ventures. Ki-sik Bae, a representative from Ridi Corporation has gained notoriety in the local publishing market as he has consistently been dedicated to returning around 75% of the profits from sales on his platform to the writers since 2008. This was around the time that the first iPhone was released. During a previous…

“The upcoming two years will be a defining point for the Korean startup ecosystem” KJ Byeon, KStartup Started as a pilot program in 2012, Kstartup officially launched in January 2013 and is now regarded as the biggest acceleration / incubation program in Korea. Supported by both Korean and American corporations (including Google, Banks Foundation for Young Entrepreneurs, and SK Planet), it focuses on early stage startups that aim to build global companies. Founders are…

Another promising initiative is Digital Entertainment Ventures (DEV). Launched in New York in 2012, DEV focuses mainly on media, entertainment and platform businesses, and only recently expanded to Korea. According to Kaine Kim the Co-CEO of DEV Korea, Seoul seemed to be the most suitable place for setting up a new office within the Asian market. This is in part due to the growing support of the Korean government, and the President’s…

“What separates us from other accelerators in Korea is the fact that we focus on global startups. You might say that everyone wants to go global, but startups in Korea are very focused locally.”                                                                                                                             Eugene Kim, SparkLabs Founded in December 2012, SparkLabs provides a small investment, mentoring and workspace in exchange for an equity stake in a company. The equity investment is equal to $25K and the equity stake…

Asia Beat 2014 is a 2-day event held in Taipei, Taiwan. Primarily it is a VC networking and Asian startup event  funded by startup related government institutions in Taiwan, as well as media and business consortiums from Japan, China, Korea, and Singapore. Get Tickets For AsiaBeat 2014 here. Korea will be represented by ten startups at the event. They are: Bridge Mobile will be represented by Jung-woo Choi, the winning team from…

“We are trying to come up with a realistic solution to help startups to relocate overseas. We are going to completely reimagine what people have done so far. We are going to determine what startups truly need.”                                                                                                                           Steven Baek, FuturePlay Founded in early 2014, FuturePlay focuses on funding early-stage tech startups. The company believes that in order to understand the market properly and have a solid basis, a…