“When it comes to innovation Korea is a global leader” – Mark Zuckerburg The above statement comes from a speech Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO delivered recently, and demonstrates a changing tide of thought about Korea. No more the ‘Land of Morning calm’ it once was, Korea is emerging emboldened onto the world stage, ready to prove itself, no matter what. My recent article described Korea’s top accelerators and their efforts in providing…

Seoul, with its rapidly growing startup ecosystem is gaining precedence as one of the most promising entrepreneurial hubs in the world. Home to two of the most influential global tech leaders, Samsung and LG, the perception of Seoul has traditionally been of a corporate hub. But this is now rapidly changing, as a new breed of tech startups rise and as the big boys begin to plateau. South Korea is now rapidly…

It’s one thing for local entrepreneurs to scale across Southeast Asia. It’s quite another for foreign entrepreneurs to do the same. The economic and logistical constraints unique to the region are already difficult to tackle: lack of a universal payment method, like credit cards or PayPal; relatively poor infrastructure and logistics; and hard-to-reach consumers who are more inclined to purchase offline than on. But foreign entrepreneurs have the added disadvantage of being…

Last December, Aileen Lee from Cowboy Ventures, identified 39 software startups that have reached valuations of over $1 Billion, and grouped them under the moniker of The Unicorn Club, in her landmark TechCrunch post. Since then, software startups with valuations of over $1 Billion are being commonly called “Unicorns” in Silicon Valley and worldwide. On the conclusion of a second very successful beGLOBAL 2014, where ten Korean startups featured in Silicon Valley, we…

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…

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…

BeLaunch 2014 kicks off this Wednesday in Dongdaemun, but It’s a fair bet that some of the contenders in this year’s startup battle are still perfecting their presentations. I did competitive pitches for almost 10 years in the PR industry and now I’m telling the world about my current company. From this experience, I’ve found some clear attributes that winning pitches have. Here’s the list: 1. Tell a Great Story Your slides…

500 Startups: Asia is all about the mobile internet. And one particular country, home of amazing food and amazing connectivity has quietly been a technology leader not just regionally but worldwide. That’s right, I’m talking about Korea: home of 2NE1, PSY, Samsung, and a quickly growing tech startup scene. For a country of roughly 50 million people, Korea is disproportionately important in technology. Did you know that it was ranked second in the world…

In January in Davos, Switzerland, South Korea’s first female President, Park Geun-Hye pushed forward with a multi-billion “Creative Economy” policy. Although Korea has seen a great rise in GDP and living conditions in the last 50 years, President Park now believes the current economic growth environment in Korea has reached its limit, and just like startups often need to, she has decided to pivot the Korean economy to embrace innovation as a…

Within two weeks of joining Shakr, a Seoul and San Francisco-based video creation startup, I was on a 4:00 p.m. flight to San Francisco to represent the company at Google’s annual conference for it’s biggest advertising partners. The plane touched down at 9:00 a.m., I went into the bathroom at the airport to put on a suit, grabbed a “you might need two hands for that” sized black coffee, and went straight…

Cloud Computing Dissected: Everything You Need to Know About the Hottest Thing in IT Yahoo has been on an acquisition blitz as of late, amassing 29 acquisitions for the year 2013. The most recent acquisition was QuikIO, a personal cloud computing service. We are unsure as to what glorious product Yahoo plans on releasing with all these acquisitions but we know it is going to involve cloud computing. This comes as no…

The concept of value builds on alternative returns. To put your money in your business, you should expect better returns from that investment than you could achieve through other investment vehicles. Thus the main target of any company should always be, not maximizing revenues or profits alone, but maximizing profits with as little capital invested as possible. In other words, maximizing the return on invested capital, ROIC, is key. CEOs of SMEs…

Happy Lunar New Year to all readers! Here’s the list of startups which we have written about in the past seven days.

Ali Masoudi looks at the energy sector in the Middle East and North Africa region, in this article, The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Abu Dhabi, “Masdar City” a global center of excellence in the renewable energy and clean technology will be introduced and potential business opportunities will be discussed.

Serial entrepreneur Leigh Drogen who is the Co-Founder and CEO of Estimize shares his tips and learning as a startup founder.