SparkLabs, a startup accelerator in Korea, hosted its first Demo Day today in Seoul, Korea. SparkLabs also announced its expansion into healthcare for its upcoming second class. Sparklabs is founded by Bernard Moon, Hanjoo Lee and Jimmy Kim.
“We were originally planning to expand into healthcare next year, but the inquiries have been overwhelming from entrepreneurs in the healthcare and biotech sectors in Korea to help their companies go global. SparkLabs is excited to open our program and accept 2-4 healthcare related startups when applications open on March 29th,” explained Jimmy Kim, co-founder of SparkLabs, who received his BS and MS in biomedical engineering.
Additionally, Sparklabs also shared that Tom Peters, management guru and author of In Search of Excellence which was named “Top Three Business Books of the Century,” will join SparkLabs’ honorary Board of Advisors.
“We are extremely honored and excited to have a thought leader such as Tom Peters being an advisor to SparkLabs. He has been described as the ‘father of the post-modern corporation’ and there are only a handful of thinkers who have changed the business world as much as Tom Peters,” added Bernard Moon, co-founder of SparkLabs.
On SparkLabs’ first Demo Day, five companies presented:
ABLAR Company/FiveRocks (Incubation Company)
ABLAR is spinning out FiveRocks, an advertising marketplace for mobile game developers. Their FiveRocks Market launched today to provide a new advertising marketplace for mobile game developers in Korea and North America.
FiveRocks Market offers opportunities for game developers to use ad inventory in a variety of deal structures. For example, game developers are able to form a credit union of ad inventory for CPI/CPC or to borrow ad inventory in advance and pay back with inventory or cash (loan). These ad products are designed for small and medium sized game developers to lessen their marketing burden. With FiveRocks Market, mobile game developers will be able to acquire new users through efficient and analytical marketing channels.
“Demand for better marketing methods is rapidly growing in the mobile game industry. We are going to expand the market even further with our effective targeting system.” said Changsu Lee, CEO of FiveRocks.
NFLabs (Big Data)
NFLabs launched Peloton Personal Edition, which allows individuals, such as data scientists, to utilize their big data platform for testing and analysis. This version includes Peloton’s lightning fast ad-hoc query engine (AQE) and dynamic graphical generator (DGG). It will allow users to add user-defined functions (UDF) as well as custom-built business logic, and this will be used on top of existing Hadoop deployments.
NFLabs also launched a limited beta release of their Enterprise Edition, which is an end-to-end platform for managing, processing and analyzing large scale data sets. This is available for one month of free usage without commitment.
WePlanet (Personal Smart Journal)
WePlanet launched a new personal smart journal called STEP. STEP is a mobile service that is focused on tracking life activities through an intuitive icon-based platform and provides aggregated information through infographics. STEP helps users capture snapshots of their lives in a timely and meaningful manner with just a few icon clicks then easily aggregates and analyzes their activities.
Memebox (E-commerce/Beauty Products)
Memebox launched their single-touch subscription for mobile. Through a short SMS, Memebox users can click and instantly log into their Memebox account. They can easily complete a purchase through their mobile device with a single click on an item. This is the first of many mobile features and apps that Memebox is launching in 2013.
KnowRe (EdTech)
KnowRe is an educational technology company that develops an adaptive learning solution focused on providing a personalized learning experience for each student. KnowRe presented their recently launched beta for students and teachers with an initial focus on math skllls. Gone are the days of boring math worksheets. KnowRe lets students build their own math empire and have fun while improving their math skills.
Merrywind (Online Gaming)
Merrywind is an online gaming studio whose first product was a Facebook game called Hotel Casino. Merrywind is developing their next game which is a mobile play that is in stealth mode, so they did not present on demo day.
