Premier Startup Accelerator for Korea’s Entrepreneurs
Our Vision
All of our founders are entrepreneurs who have built
companies in Korea and the U.S. We have endured the
ups and downs of entrepreneurship, successes and
failures, and have developed a strong desire to help out
the next genera>on of Korea’s entrepreneurs.
Founded by Entrepreneurs for Entrepreneurs
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Our Program
SparkLabs is providing a 3-‐month long program for seed
to early-‐stage entrepreneurs who have a vision beyond
Korea’s borders. Entrepreneurs who want to build global
companies and have a vision to expand to the U.S., China,
Japan and elsewhere. SparkLabs uniquely provides a
world-‐class team of mentors to accelerate and guide each
of our companies.
Mentorship-driven Startup Accelerator
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Our Program
• 4 to 8 startups chosen for each class. Two classes per year.
• Investment of $25,000 (typically 6% of the company)
• Over $215,000 in free perks (i.e. office space, hos>ng, access to
Silicon Valley’s top law firm, Wilson Sonsini)
• Assignment of at least 5 world-‐class mentors
Program Elements
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Our Team Bernard Moon, Co-founder & General Partner Bernard is Co-‐founder & CEO of Vidquik, a new web conferencing & sales solu>ons pla\orm. He was previously a Managing Director at the Lunsford Group, which is a private investment firm with holdings in real estate, healthcare and other industries. Bernard was Co-‐founder & VP of Business Development of GoingOn Networks, a social media pla\orm for companies, and also led their product development where BusinessWeek recognized them in their "Best of the Web" list.
Bernard co-‐founded a couple other startups, raised over $50 million in venture capital, and enjoys helping other entrepreneurs as much as possible. He serves as a mentor to Mucker Lab, a startup accelerator in LA, and a mentor at KoFounder Labs, an ini>a>ve of the Korean govt/KISED run by YouNoodle in Silicon Valley. He is a frequent guest writer to various technology journals, such as VentureBeat and Mashable. Bernard has spoke and lectured about startups and entrepreneurship at Stanford University, American Chamber of Commerce in Korea and other organiza>ons
Jimmy is Chairman of Inno>ve, an interac>ve soiware company that mixes passion, crea>vity and technology to create new interac>ve user experiences and innova>ve presenta>on solu>ons. Inno>ve’s client lists include BMW, Infini>, Nike Golf, Dentsu, Korea Telecom and other leading worldwide companies.
Previously, Jimmy was CEO of Nexonova, a game development studio of Nexon Corp that specializes in Social Network Games, and served on Nexon's Board of Directors. Prior to Nexonova, Jimmy served Execu>ve Vice President of Nexon Corp, and Head of Nexon’s Portal (www.nexon.com) and Web Services. Nexon is one of the most successful online gaming provider, with games such as Maple Story, Dungeon and Fighter, Combat Arms, and Kart Rider. Nexon services over 20 games across 60 countries to an audience of 300 million. Jimmy received his B.S. in Engineering from Northwestern University, and also a M.S. in Engineering from Korea Advanced Ins>tute of Science and Technology (KAIST).
James Kim, Co-founder & General Partner
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Our Team John Lee, Co-founder & General Partner John Lee is a co-‐founder & EVP of Corporate Development and Strategy of Hostway. He serves addi>onal responsibili>es as CEO of Hostway India and Hostway Korea. John and his fellow co-‐founders bootstrapped Hostway into a top 5 web hos>ng company in the world with over 700 employees. Hostway is a mul>na>onal web hos>ng company headquartered in Chicago, and serves more than 600,000 customers worldwide. He is currently responsible for overall corporate strategy, strategic alliances, and mergers and acquisi>ons. Previously, he has held posi>ons in every department of the company, including leading global marke>ng and sales and overall P&L for North America. Mr. Lee was born and raised in Korea and immigrated to the United States at age 13. He holds a BA in Biology from the University of Chicago.
Jay has more than 22 years’ experience in Asia. Currently, as a Managing Partner of Pacific Advisers, he has advised, financed and invested in a number of deals across industries, principally mining & energy, technology and property. In recent years, Jay has focused on origina>ng investment mandates for PA to invest its own capital in both publicly listed and private vehicles. Such origina>on leads to co-‐investment opportuni>es selec>vely with the hedge fund and ins>tu>onal investor communi>es. Jay has significant experience with structuring deals and working with their investor, industry and service (legal and advisory) counterparts.
Previously, Jay served as an Execu>ve Director in the Equity Division at Morgan Stanley and worked in the Tokyo, HK, Beijing and Singapore offices over a 16-‐year period. Within this >me, Jay served 2 years as Morgan Stanley’s “secondee” to China Interna>onal Capital Corpora>on, their JV Chinese Investment Bank, as the Director in charge of the Equity Division and Capital Markets in HK (& Beijing). Prior to that, Jay worked at Coopers & Lybrand in New York (USA). Jay graduated from Boston College in Newton, MA, USA and has basic speaking skills in Japanese.
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Jay McCarthy, General Partner
Our Team Awy Julianto, General Partner Awy is a General Partner of Pacific Advisers. He has extensive experience in technology, media, consumer products and telecom industries in Asia Pacific over the past 18 years. Awy’s key exper>se is in the technology, gaming, e–commerce, and consumer retail sectors. His current areas of geographical focus are China, Korea and SEA -‐ Indonesia. In 2012, two recent financial deals that Awy executed on were capital raising assignments for 360Buy and Ganji in China.
Awy has served as Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Fox Digital Group at News Corp where he was in charge of the company's expansion into the Asia Pacific region including Australia and India. Awy has also previously held senior management posi>on with Viacom Brand Solu>on and MTV Networks Interna>onal, where he launched MTV Japan, MTV India, MTV Australia, and MTV Indonesia. Awy was selected as one of the ten MTV Networks Interna>onal Leaders to par>cipate in World Class Management Ini>a>ve in London and Cannes. Awy was also in>mately involved in the expansion of Truphone, a global Vodafone UK MVNO partner into the Asia Pacific and Middle East region. Awy graduated from the University of Parahyangan, Indonesia. He speaks English, Bahasa and proficient Mandarin.
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Advisors & Mentors
Mark Cuban, Owner of the Dallas Mavericks
Michael Crow, President of Arizona State University & Chairman of In-‐Q-‐Tel
Ray Ozzie, CEO of Talko & Former Chief Soiware Architect at Microsoi
Vint Cerf, Vice President & Chief Internet Evangelist for Google
Tom Peters, Management Guru & Author of In Search of Excellence
Advisors
Charles Huang, Co-‐Founder of RedOctane (Guitar Hero)
David Lee, Managing Partner of SV Angel
Douglas Glen, Former GM of LucasGames & CSO of Maqel
Erik Moreno, SVP of Corp. Development at Fox
Mike Joo, COO of Global Markets at BofA Merrill Lynch
Mentors (selected from over 90)
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Partners
Hostway Korea (free hosting)
DEMO (fast track application process / discount if accepted)
DEMO China (fast track application process / discount if accepted)
Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (legal counsel / $5,000 deferred fees)
Ginger Software (free English tutoring)
Global Accelerator Network (Techstars network, over $100,000 in perks)
F6S (Accelerator platform, over $40,000 in perks)
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First Class of Companies NFLabs (Big Data) Funding to date: $500,000
A big data company that built Peloton, a service that provides a full end-to-end solution to store, manage, process, and analyze large
amounts of data. The plug-and-play solution brings together Hadoop, real-time search technology and enterprise grade connectors.
The company has already scored partnership deals with Korea’s Hyosung Information Systems and Hortonworks in the US.
KnowRe (Educational Tech) Funding to date: $400,000
An educational technology company that provides learning experiences tailored to individual students. The system assesses students
strengths and weaknesses before drawing up a personalized plan based on their needs. Closed $1.4 million from Softbank Korea after
the start of the program.
Ablar Company (App Development) Funding to date: $3 million
Ablar has launched a range of mobile applications and products, including Craigslist-for-Korea ‘Bulletin’ and restaurant reservation
app ‘Reservation King, Poing’. The company has two products in the pipeline for this year, and was started by the founder of
Tatter&Company, a blogging software system bought by Google in 2008.
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First Class of Companies Merrywind (Gaming) Funding to date: $400,000
The core of online gaming studio Merrywind comes from Korean gaming giant Nexon. The one-year-old company’s !rst product
was the recently released Facebook gambling game Hotel Casino.
WePlanet (Mobile Social Service) Funding to date: Bootstrapped
A mobile social service that tracks activities and details of a user’s life through icon-based check-ins and the aggregation of data
from services like Facebook.
Memebox (Ecommerce/Beauty) Funding to date: $200,000 (Self-funded)
A Korean online beauty store that opened in February 2012. It claims to have overtaken Rocket Internet-backed GlossyBox within
just two months of launch. The team says it is focused on building its presence on mobile and expanding into other countries in
Asia.
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Seminars for First Class Hae-min Lee, Chairman of Amotech and former CEO of Samsung Electronics (LCD
Digital Appliances Group)
Taught and discussed about his experiences as CEO of a large corporation and a startup. What it takes to succeed
in business and overcoming impossible challenges. Managing rapid growth at Samsung Electronics and his
experience of taking a startup to IPO in Korea.
Charles Huang, Co-founder & CEO, GreenThrottle / Creator of Guitar Hero
Charles' entrepreneurial journey in building one of the handful of billion dollar video game franchises and his
latest effort to disrupt the video game industry.
Hyunki Moon, Former GM of Fleishman-Hillard Korea
Marketing & PR strategies for startups.
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Seminars for First Class Jun-yong Hyun, VP of Enterprise Solutions at LGU+
"Open Innovation: What Are Large Corporations Looking For?” Discussed corporate partnerships and how best to
prepare for and approach large enterprise.
Eric Kim, Managing Director of Maverick Capital
Eric led investments into Kakao and Coupang. He discussed his approach towards looking for the next big
investment opportunities in Korea.
Sirgoo Lee, Co-CEO of Kakao
“Managing rapid growth." Since he managed rapid growth both at NHN and Kakao, Sirgoo discussed his
experiences and thoughts on preserving startup culture through rapid growth.
* This is a sample of the sessions given and not a complete list.
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Demo Day Demo Day is “graduation day” for each class. Our !rst class experienced a
successful Demo Day on March7th, 2013 that was attended by over 120
investors, corporate/business development professionals and journalists.
The event created a lot of buzz with coverage from the major dailies in
Korea, KBS News (major TV network), Forbes Korea and others.
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