Top Asian VCs with Global Impact Panel

Saemin Ahn (Managing Partner of Rakuten Ventures)

Saemin Ahn (“Sae”) is the Managing Partner at Rakuten Ventures. Prior to Rakuten Ventures, Sae was at Google for 5 years from 2008 to 2013 managing Sales and Business Development for Asia.

Along with writing in spare time, having been named one of Quora's 2013 Top Writers, he has made investments ranging from C2C marketplace, payment infrastructure technology to visual search technology. All of which happened since Rakuten Venture’s inception in April of 2013.

He also has extensive experience in Brand Management and Content Distribution with his time in Hyundaicard and Animal Studio, an animation startup.

Ryan Lee (Executive Director of Softbank Ventures Korea)

Kangjoon Ryan Lee is an executive director and partner at SoftBank Ventures Korea.

Since joining SoftBank in 2003, Ryan has led and co-led a number of investments mainly in internet/mobile services, gaming, cloud, data center solutions and communication technologies. Ryan’s selected past and current portfolio companies include Indilinx (acquired by OCZ, NSDQ:OCZ), Entelligent (acquired by Nexon, TSE:3659), Soompi (acquired byEnswers), Korea Electronic Certification Authority (KSE:041460), Lotiple (acquired by KakaoTalk), IGAWorks, Terasquare, Devsisters, IDIncu, Dramafever and Wandoujia where he has been serving as a board member or as a board observer.
Prior to joining SBVK, Ryan worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company where he primarily served on corporate finance and strategy issues in various industries.

Moderator: Han Kim (Co-Founder and General Partner of Altos Ventures)

Han Kim is a General Partner and co-founder of Altos Ventures, focusing on investments in the areas of mobile and software services.

Han currently serves on the board of ADOP, Bluehole Studios, Bookjam, Pandora.tv, Spicus, and Woowahan Brothers, and works closely with BCNX, Coupang, I-um, SeeControl and Vesta Corporation. He also led the firm’s prior investments in Nable Communications (153460), DemandTec (IBM), Instill (iTradeNetwork), Digital Market (Agile), Evant (Manhattan Associates), and iOwn (Citigroup).

Before co-founding Altos Ventures in 1996, Han worked at Booz Allen & Hamilton solving strategic and operational issues for global media, retail and distribution companies.

Previously, he was at Procter & Gamble. Han also served as a Captain in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Han served two years in Korea, commanding both U.S. and Korean soldiers.

Tech-Centric Entrepreneurship in Korea

Chester Roh (CSO, 5Rocks)

Experienced in spending and investing, this angel has invest in 15 companies so far.

As the chief strategy officer and leading serial entrepreneur in Korea, Chester overseas the company’s business and product strategies. Prior to 5Rocks, he founded four startups including Tatter&Company, which became the first company in Asia to be acquired by Google, and INZEN, which went public on KOSDAQ in 2002.

Some of the successful portfolio companies include Ticket Monster (acquired by Groupon) and Dialoid (acquired by Daum).

Jason Han (Founder, NexR)

This proactive advocate of entrepreneurship in Korea made strides in 2007 in which he founded NexR Inc. which was the first big data and cloud computing tech startup in Korea. It was then acquired by KT in 2011. Under his leadership NexR created “icube cloud” in 2009 which was the first public cloud service in Korea and was used by mobile app developers.

In 2008, he became the first Chairman of the Consortium of Cloud Computing Research(CCCR)

Working as a professor to brighten young minds, he encourages his students to create their own startup.

Simon Bae (CTO of Cloud Strategy, 3D Systems)

Simon (Seockhoon) Bae is a serial entrepreneur and currently acts as the CTO of Cloud Strategy at 3D Systems. 3D Systems invented the SLA 3D printing technology 30 years ago and is the market leader in consumer and industrial 3D printing and manufacturing solutions.

Before 3D Systems, he founded INUS Technology in Seoul, and the company developed and marketed world’s top selling 3D scan data processing software this was acquired by 3D Systems in 2012.

Afterwards he started a new start-up, VisPower Technology which developed TeamPlatform, a cloud based collaboration Web app strongly targeting service markets. It was acquired by 3D Systems in 2013.

Simon’s current focus is to build a cloud based solution specialized in 3D data processing, which can facilitate the evolution of 3D printing industry.

Moderator: Junghee Ryu, (Founder/CEO of FuturePlay, acquired by Intel)

Bringing 19 years of experience as an inventor, entrepreneur and investor, this veteran is also a partner of Primer, first startup accelerator in Korea founded by serial entrepreneurs.

Now he is Partner and CEO of FuturePlay Inc., which builds and invests tech-centric startups innovating human-computer interactions. He also co-founded and was CTO of Iconlab Inc., and invented “InterCode” which is 2D barcode optimized for mobile camera phone scanning and de-facto standard for Korean operators.

Jung-hee founded Olaworks Inc. in 2006 and worked as CEO and CSO until Intel’s acquisition in 2012. He created “ScanSearch” in Olaworks, the mega-hit mobile augmented reality service with over 2mil users. He worked as Strategic Planner in PEG-IPG-ICG, Intel Corp after the acquisition until 2014.