Easiaid is a Korean Start-up, obsessed with Media Mining, which seeks to track everything on TV shows in order to give Ad viewing power back to the customer. At a time when heritage advertising has lost its appeal and it efficacy, content producers are desperate to find new ways of monetizing content. The industry is wide open and innovation is leading future trends that could change the ways we consume branded content…

바야흐로 아이디어만 있으면 무엇이든 만들어낼 수 있는 시대가 도래했다. 십시일반으로 대중들이 돈을 모아 하나의 프로젝트를 완성시켜가는 크라우드 펀딩 플랫폼이 부상하면서부터 생긴 변화다. 크라우드 펀딩 플랫폼의 대표격인 킥스타터를 통해서는 2012년 스마트 워치계의 신성, 페블(Pebble)이 탄생하기도 했다. 당시 모금액은 112억 원에 달한다. 이러한 혁신들은 지금도 계속해서 탄생하고 있다. 금주의 가장 혁신적이고, 많은 사람들의 관심을 불러 일으키는 아이디어 4가지를 선정해보았다. 일렉트릭 오브젝트(Electric Object) 미술과 IT의 만남은 새로운 예술 가치를 만들어낸다. 평면에 그려진 미술작품이 깊고 정적인…

Kakao Corp., the company behind Korea’s biggest mobile messaging platform, aims to launch a wallet service in the next few months. This is the most recent addition to the Kakao platform, as the company continues to diversify its portfolio of services for users. It is hoped that Kakao Corp.’s namesake payment platform ‘Bank Wallet Kakao’ will help boost the ironically nascent mobile wallet industry in South Korea. Ironic, because Korea is praised…

우버코리아, 드디어 공식 입장 밝히다 “서울시의 우버 차단은 전 세계에 부는 ‘스마트 도시’ 추세와는 매우 동떨어진 이해를 보여주고 있다고 생각합니다. 이번 서울시가 발표한 성명은 서울이 아직 과거에 정체되어 있으며, 글로벌 ‘공유경제’ 흐름에 뒤처지고 있음을 여실히 보여주고 있습니다.” 며칠간 계속해서 논쟁이 되어 왔던 ‘서울시 우버 앱 차단 논란’에 대해 어제 우버코리아 강경훈 대표가 공식적인 견해를 밝혔다. 서울시는 우버를 ‘여객자동차 운수사업법 제34조(유상운송 금지)’로 고발하고, 지난 4월 한 우버 운전자에게 벌금 100만 원을 부과했다. 강경훈…

Is Korea once again employing protectionist policies rather than embracing the opportunity presented by progress? Seoul is proud of being labelled one of the the most progressive tech-focused cities in the world. The capital has one of the highest smartphone penetration rates in the world. Its residents are well-known for their rapid tech adoption. Additionally it’s administration has been pushing a move towards innovation and tech development. However,  Uber will likely be…

After a period of rampant speculations it has been reported that Line Corp.,which now boasts almost half a billion users, has filed confidentially for an initial offering in the U.S. It is expected that the company will seek a dual-listing in New York and Tokyo. This, according to a report our on Bloomberg. While the details have not been released publicly by Line, it is believed that Morgan Stanley (MS) is managing the listing…

전 세계 기업가의 존경을 받고 있는 리차드 브랜슨(Richard Branson, 1950.7.18~). 그는 버진그룹의 창업자이자 회장이며, 16세때 <스튜던트>라는 학생 잡지로 창업을 했고 1967년 버진레코드의 성공을 시작으로 현재 버진 항공, 버진 모바일, 미디어, 금융, 건강 분야에 이르기는 수백 개의 계열사를 가지고 있다. 2009년에는 세계 최초 민간 우주여객선 ‘스페이스십Ⅱ’를 공개하여 우주를 향한 첫발을 내딛기도 했다. 어떻게 그는 이런 버진 그룹 왕국을 건설할 수 있었을까? 그의 주요한 철학 몇 가지를 나열해보고자 한다. 1. 어떤 일을 진행할 때 가장…

This article was co-authored by Alan McGlade (Digital Entertainment Ventures) and Nathan Millard (beSUCCESS) and appeared on Forbes on July 18 2014. As little as five years ago Korea’s startup scene was undistinguished, but now the nation has taken an important step towards establishing itself as a key technology hub in the Asia Pacific region and an essential partner for global investors and tech businesses. Two young Korean startups have gained the…

“Touch Your Customers… Appropriately” Does the English in the above picture seem awkward to you? Let’s take a moment to look at it. There are no misspellings. The grammar is correct. But there is something definitely strange about telling a potential customer that your company “can touch anywhere”. Touch what exactly, and for what purpose? I guess we will have to use our imagination, but in this case first impressions will certainly…

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…

Writepath Inc. has recently secured $500k from B-Dash Ventures and Pinehurst Advisors. The team intends to use the funds to further expand into Asian markets outside their base of Taiwan, with a focus on the huge opportunity in Korea. Founded in 2009 WritePath provides multi-lingual editing services and online translation solutions. Currently the company serves 22 countries and has three services in the market. One such, Top Admit, is now being touted…

As Korea continues to brand itself as a startup nation, increasingly foreigners are becoming interested in joining Korean startups or even starting up their own venture in Korea. But getting visas in Korea for entrepreneurial endeavours can be daunting and is often tied up with red tape, as the government grapples with the best way forward to open Korea to foreign workers in the tech and startup space. A few of the…

You need only check out professional eaters on YouTube or Psy’s latest video to see that eating is a national obsession in Korea. What’s more, metropolitan Seoul is active 24 hours a day and is home to around 26 million people. Taking this into account its not surprising that the market size for the restaurant sector is around $60Bn per year, with more than 500,000 restaurants open for business. The area of…

Imagine if department stores in busy urban shopping districts could lock-in customers travelling into the area, before they even arrived. Kimgisa, a navigation app developed by Korean startup locNall aims to be the No. 1 player in the navigation and location-based marketing industry in Asia and make that marketing dream a reality. The team has already started working with large clients like Incheon International Airport to deliver targeted marketing to airport visitors…

Hearing about employees giving up their highly-prized, stable, and well-paid corporate careers in Korea’s tech behemoths used to be incredibly rare. But the young team at ASDTech has done exactly that, choosing to give up salaries of well over $100k for the excitement and promise of entrepreneurship. Having founded ASDTech in 2013 after leaving LG Electronics, they developed their while-label cloud service, ‘Cloudike’, and have now secured their first major clients. Furthermore they have…

Global Brain, an early and growth stage investor from Tokyo has just announced its most recent investment in a Korean startup. The “GB-V Growth Fund Investment Limited Partnership” managed by Global Brain Corporation, has invested an undisclosed amount in Mbite Inc., from Seoul, Korea. Founded in 2011 MBite is a global provider of game illustrators’ matching platform “rainbow.dot”. The fresh finances will be used to bolster R&D capabilities and hire a global sales team….

가상현실 기술을 위한 콘텐츠 시장이 열리다  가상현실 기술이 등장한 지도 어느새 15년. 그리고 SF 영화에 있는 것으로만 여겨졌던 가상현실이 드디어 길고 긴 동면을 마치고 우리 삶 속으로 성큼 걸어들어오기 시작했다. 최근 페이스북은 가상현실 헤드셋 기업인 오큘러스 VR을 20억 달러(약 2조 1,500억 원)에 인수했고, 소니는 게임용 VR 헤드셋 ‘모피어스(Morpheus)’를 내놓으며 가상현실 경쟁의 신호탄을 쏘아 올렸다. 기술자가 새로운 가상현실 기술을 시장으로 가져오는 속도는 매우 빠르지만, 좋은 컨텐츠 없이는 무용지물이다. 가상 매체는 스토리텔링을 효과적으로 할…

The Korean startup ecosystem has been exploding over the last couple of years. As more interesting startups begin to emerge, so the support services to power their success also become more diverse and more mature. There are a number of key accelerator programs in Seoul now, that offer a range of services and finance for early stage Korean companies. Interestingly there is also now a distinct push towards helping Korean startups connect…

There are a number of good resources for finding information on Korean Technology, business and tech start- ups. Some are a bit more difficult to find, so here is a list of the most helpful news outlets and startup resources for Korea. beSUCCESS: If your reading this article than you no doubt know who beSUCCESS is and what we do. But just in case: beSUCCESS is a South Korean media platform about startups,…

As has been reported widely in Asia, South Korea is using the fact that Windows XP is no longer supported as a reason to walk away from Microsoft completely. While the rational for this stance makes sense; updating to new versions of the Microsoft software can be expensive and time-consuming, the government should also immediately discontinue its use of Hangul. Hangul is a Korean software package similar to MS Office that is used as the default (and…