SparkLabs Demoday is the world's largest demoday event featuring game-changing startups, new technologies and innovations, and discussions on the latest issues and trends from leaders in technology, media and telecommunications. This is a must-see event where you will meet some of the leading entrepreneurs, investors, corporate leaders, media and government people all interested in innovation and change.
DEMODAY 15TEAMS
[ SparkLabs Accelerator Batch 15 ]
RawLabs
Airsupply provides maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) commerce solutions as a SaaS cloud service, integrating various purchasing channels and processes into a centralized platform. By streamlining the purchasing process and enabling budget management through purchase data tracking, Airsupply allows SMBs to lower administrative costs and inefficiencies.
Headquarter : Seoul, Korea
OCTATCO CO.,LTD.
Octatco is a hardware and software solution that enables users to authenticate their identities online securely and simply with biometric technology. With Octatco’s EzFinger2, users can authenticate themselves quickly and safely, while reducing the risk of data breach as the market moves towards a post-password era.
Headquarter : Gyeonggi-Do, Korea
Shark Market Company Limited
Shark Market is a fresh foods delivery platform that services the Vietnam market, providing its customers access to fresh foods in a reliably and conveniently. By focusing on high quality, competitive pricing, and an efficient delivery system, Shark Market is redefining the way people in Vietnam shop for their groceries.
Headquarter : Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Seoul Bund
Seoul Bund's e-commerce platform offers a curated selection of East Asian-style livingware items.
Through the ages, East Asia has been creating high-quality craftwork using traditional techniques. Just as Northern-European designs have influenced the lifestyles all over the world, Seoul Bund seeks to promote the values of East Asian traditional design with our selection of livingware items. Explore East Asian design and tradition with contemporary elements through Seoul Bund.
Headquarter : Seoul, Korea
otdeal
Otdeal's Robot MD is an innovative RPA(Robotic Process Automation) service that performs data-backed item curation and creates banner displays for e-commerce platforms. With its advanced AI technology, Robot MD performs data analysis and assists MD users in product search, organization, display and banner design, as well as helps with market research, increasing work efficiency by over 70%.
Headquarter : Seoul, Korea
RECO, Inc.
RECO’s UpBox platform allows waste management companies track and dispose of different types of waste more efficiently and transparently by providing logistical and site-matching services. We aim to minimize wasted resources and modernize the way waste is managed by data-based tracking and recycling.
Headquarter : Chungcheongnam-do, Korea
BetweenJobs
BetweenJobs is a platform that provides valuable and trustworthy insights into employment positions from current employees. With access to our network of registered users, BetweenJobs creates an online community that connects aspiring employees to current employees, who are able to provide insights into employers and specific positions. Users can also receive assistance with editing applications and other documents from other users.
Headquarter : Seoul, Korea
XELIN Corporation
XELIN develops laser cutting technology for semiconductor wafers, which are becoming smaller, thinner, and multi-layer to adapt to evolving usages. However, the existing technology with its limited heat and particle control and inability to depth-control is becoming increasingly unsuitable for the changing wafer types. XELIN's Micro-Dicing technology overcomes these limitations and allows for clean wafer cuts that do not harm the material.
Headquarter : Seoul, Korea
programschedule
NOV.17, 2020, 13:00 - 17:10
TIME
13:00 – 13:10
13:10 – 14:00
14:00 – 14:30
14:30 – 15:45
15:45 – 16:30
16:35 – 17:05
17:05 – 17:10
Section
SparkLabs Pre-Demoday Show
Fireside Chat with MC Hammer: Future of Tech, AI and Entrepreneurship
SparkLabs Demoday 15 Opening
SparkLabs Batch 15 Pitch Session
"Women Leaders in Tech" Panel
Post-COVID-19: The New VC Investment Landscape
SparkLabs Post-Demoday Show
Panel Discussion
[Interview with Hammer : Future of Tech, AI and Entrepreneurship]
A founder and CEO whose mission is to create change and opportunity and influence new ideas and behaviors.
Founded Instant Tattoo in 2018, which is currently growing rapidly in global markets such as Japan, Singapore, and the United States.
Before its founding, she was a brand marketer at P&G and is also the author of “Going to Work in Global Professional Singapore”.
CEO Kim Nam Sook is the founder and CEO of Instant Tattoo, a tech-based company leading the next beauty and fashion. In 2017, while discussing a new digital-based beauty innovation with her housemate, she was convinced of the possibility of temporary tattoos and co-founded Instant Tattoo in April 2018. Just two months after its launch, Instant Tattoo won the Hankook Ilbo’s New Product of the Year award, drawing enthusiastic customer responses. Based on this, the business is showing rapid globalization by entering into Japan and Taiwan in 2019 and signing official licensing agreements with BTS in six regions around the world, including the United States and Japan, in October 2020.
Prior to the founding of Instant Tattoo, she worked as an Asian beauty care brand manager at Procter & Gamble and developed her marketing expertise. Being in charge of marketing for a beauty care brand with annual sales of more than 1 trillion won in the Asia Pacific region, including Japan and Australia, she led double-digit growth every year and achieved the No.1 market share in Asia. Through this experience, we have gained insights into how important beauty plays a role in our lives and what innovations can be brought about with the help of digital and mobile technology.
CEO Kim Nam Sook double majored in Business Administration and Chinese literature at Sogang University and has a book titled “Going to Work in Global Professional Singapore.” She is developing her brand and business with a mission to create change and opportunity and influence new ideas and behaviors.
Falon Fatemi
CEO & Co-founder Fireside
Falon Fatemi stood out from the pack even as a teenager. At 19, while still a student at Santa Clara University, she managed to land a full-time job at Google. She spent six years there, cutting her teeth in several departments including driving sales strategy and operations for the company’s core AdWords, online sales, and syndication partnerships teams and YouTube’s business development and partnerships team, focused on areas like live streaming, sports, and gaming.
Fatemi shares the same drive and love of business as her parents, Persian entrepreneurs who came to the U.S. during the Iranian Revolution. In 2015 she founded the enterprise software startup Node, which specializes in using A.I. and cutting-edge data crunching to help corporate sales and marketing teams. In April, Node raised $6 million, bringing total funding to $40 million, led by the billionaire and Shark Tank investor Mark Cuban. Four months later, SugarCRM, an enterprise software firm, bought Node for an undisclosed amount with Falon planning to move on to new adventures.
Susan Kim
CEO Edmodo
Susan Kim is the CEO of Edmodo, a global education technology platform with over 100 million users that connects learners with the community and content needed to reach their full potential. Previously, she was CEO of EatWith, a Greylock Partners-backed global marketplace for communal dining featuring over 700 home chefs in 50 countries and 160 cities around the world and the CEO of Plum District, an e-commerce start-up that under her leadership doubled to over 2 million members. She also spent time in various leadership positions at Google and eBay.
Susan serves as co-chair for the annual fund at The Nueva School and mentors entrepreneurs for start-up incubators MuckerLab, SparkLabs, and TechStars LA. She previously served as a founding board member of the Korean-American Community Foundation of San Francisco and as a board director for mobile fashion app Cladwell.
Susan received her MBA from Harvard Business School and her BA from Harvard College.
MC Hammer
Grammy Award-Winning Music Artist & Entrepreneur/Investor
“When MC Hammer Talks, Silicon Valley Startups Listen”
MC Hammer transformed from a world-wide popular Grammy Award-winning musician to a respected entrepreneur, investor, and corporate advisor in Silicon Valley. He invested in dozens of companies over the past 29 years and supported Salesforce and other companies' growth through his role as an advisor. He has been interested in and supportive of companies not only in the music field but also in various fields that make connected life more interesting and easy. He recently joined as an advisor to SparkLabs Frontier-ASU, one of the accelerator programs of SparkLabs Group, and is continuing various activities as a strong supporter of startups.
Jinhee Ahn Kim [Moderator]
CEO & Co-founder UYU
Jinhee Ahn Kim is co-founder & CEO of UYU Ltd. UYU is a global esports organization active in fielding competitive professional teams, content creation, lifestyle merchandising, as well as ecommerce. With a highly competitive global roster, UYU has quickly established itself as a contender across numerous esports games. Working in collaboration with some of the industry’s top talents and brands, UYU continues to push the creative boundaries of gaming centric content.
Jinhee was previously co-founder & president of Snapette, the largest mobile platform for local fashion shopping, which was sold to leading eCommerce platform PriceGrabber in 2013. At the time of its sale, Snapette was VC funded and had over 2 million users and over 300 top fashion retailer and brand partners such as Nordstrom, Nine West, UNIQLO, Theory and DVF.
She began her career as a management consultant at Bain & Co., then followed her creative interests as a menswear designer at Ralph Lauren. She founded True-Learning and was also the Director of Product Development at Mindshapes, a mobile e-learning company where she oversaw the development of award winning children's educational apps.
Jinhee was selected as one of the "Most Creative People" by Fast Company. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Harvard Alumni Association and is a board member and vice president of the Harvard Asian American Alumni Alliance. She is a board member for the Council of Korean Americans, a global network of Korean Americans working to advance issues of national importance, and is the founding co-chair for the Inspire Gala. Previously she served as the 2016 and 2017 CKA Summit & Gala co-chair.
Jinhee received her A.B. in economics from Harvard College, A.A.S. in fashion design from Parsons School of Design and J.D. from the University of Hawaii.
Christine Tsai
CEO and Founding Partner 500 Startups
Christine is the CEO and Founding Partner of 500 Startups. Since the firm’s inception in 2010, she grew 500 Startups to over $500M committed capital, 2,300+ portfolio investments, 100+ team members, 25 accelerator batches, and a vibrant community of founders spanning more than 75 countries around the world.
Christine spent her entire professional career building and investing in Silicon Valley. From 2003 to 2010, Christine held product marketing and operating roles at Google, focusing primarily on monetization and developer products. She was part of the original technical support team that helped launch Google AdSense, an advertising program for website publishers which now accounts for a significant part of Google’s revenue. During her tenure at Google, Christine also drove developer and syndication marketing at YouTube post-Google acquisition. Christine also oversaw marketing for YouTube’s APIs and developer tools, and she collaborated with numerous developers and early-stage startups integrating YouTube into their products.
Christine holds a B.A. in Cognitive Science, with a concentration in Cognitive Psychology, from the University of California at Berkeley. While at Berkeley, she was accepted into the prestigious Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program for Psychology. She was also a National Merit Scholar.
Insik Rhee
General Partner Vertex Ventures
In Sik Rhee began his career as a successful entrepreneur and transitioned to an early stage technology investor and mentor.
In Sik co-founded Kiva Software in 1995, where he developed one of the industry’s first Java application servers. Kiva was acquired by Netscape Communications in 1997 for $180 million. In 1999, In Sik co-founded Opsware (Loudcloud) — a pioneer of cloud computing – which IPO’ed and was acquired by HP for $1.6 billion in 2007.
As an investor, In Sik started as an angel/mentor then eventually found professional footing as a venture capitalist – first at Accel Partners, then Rembrandt Venture Partners, and currently as General Partner of Vertex Ventures US. Vertex US is an early stage VC with $300M under management and invests in startups focused on Enterprise B2B markets.
In Sik has a BS from UC Berkeley EECS and currently serves on the Executive Advisory Board for the College of Engineering.
Katherine Wu
Principal Notation Capital
Katherine is a Principal at Notation Capital, a New York-based venture capital fund that focuses on investing in software companies at its earliest days. Katherine began her career in law and prior to Notation was the Director of Business Development at an NYC-based tech startup. Katherine grew up between China and Hong Kong and holds a BA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University and a JD from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
Patrick Chung
Managing General Partner Xfund
Patrick is Managing General Partner of Xfund. Prior to Xfund, Patrick was a partner at NEA and led the firm’s consumer and seed investment practices. He is a director of 23andMe and Philo, and led investments in Guideline, Halo Neuro, IFTTT, Landit, Nebula Genomics, NewtonX, Rock Health, ThirdLove, and Zumper. Past investments include Segment (acquired by Twilio), Kensho (acquired by S&P Global), Plaid (acquired by Visa), Pulse (acquired by LinkedIn), Loopt (acquired by Green Dot), GoodGuide (acquired by Underwriters Laboratories), Ravel Law (acquired by Lexis-Nexis), Xfire (acquired by Viacom), and Xoom (NASDAQ: XOOM). Prior to joining NEA, Patrick helped to grow ZEFER, an Internet services firm (acquired by NEC) to more than $100 million in annual revenues and more than 700 people across six global offices. Prior to ZEFER, Patrick was with McKinsey & Company, where he specialized in hardware, software, and services companies.
Patrick received a joint JD-MBA degree from Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School, where he served as an Editor of the Harvard Law Review. Patrick was a Commonwealth Scholar at Oxford University, where he earned a Master of Science degree. Patrick earned his A.B. degree at Harvard College in Environmental Science. He is a member of the New York and Massachusetts bars, was an elected director of the Harvard Alumni Association, and a member of the Committee to Visit Harvard College. He is also an Associate of the Creative Destruction Lab at the University of Toronto.
John HanJoo Lee [Moderator]
Co-founder & General Partner of SparkLabs CEO and Co-founder of Bespin Global
HanJoo Lee is a Serial Entrepreneur and a startup investor. He is passionate about Cloud, Startups and Global Entrepreneurship.
He co-founded Hostway with his college friends in 1998. HanJoo played active role in Hostway’s growth both in the US as well as internationally. He successfully exited the Hostway US business by selling the majority stake to a private equity firm in the US.
In 2012, he co-founded SparkLabs along with 5 other co-founders. SparkLabs is both an accelerator and a VC.
His latest venture is Bespin Global co-founded in 2015. The company is a cloud managed service provider (MSP) operating in Korea, China and Dubai. It helps mid to large enterprises adopt both private and public cloud services through professional services, managed services and OpsNow, a proprietary multi-cloud management platform. The company has grown to over 850 employees with more than 880 customers.
Lastly, he was born and raised in Korea and he is married with three children. He graduated with a B.A. in Biological Sciences from the University of Chicago.
Nicholas Brathwaite is a founding Partner of Riverwood Capital. Nicholas has spent over 25 years developing and evaluating technology.
From 1996 to 2007, he served as the Chief Technology Officer at Flextronics, where he worked alongside Michael Marks, former CEO. At Flextronics, Nicholas was innovative in his drive to move the company into product development, and he oversaw the launch and growth of several of Flextronics’ largest business units.
Previously, he was a founding member of nChip responsible for development of the industry-leading advanced multi-chip module assembly process. More recently with Riverwood, Nicholas served as the interim CEO for Aptina Imaging from February 2007 to August 2008. His unique combination of technology know-how and commercial judgment will add value throughout the investment life-cycle at Riverwood.
Nicholas earned a M.Sc. Degree in Polymer Science Engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada and a B.Sc. (Honors) Degree in Applied Chemistry from McMaster University, Canada. He is a director of Globant, Arkmicro., Power Integrations, Tessera Technologies, Inc and Chairman of the Board at Aptina Imaging.
David Lee
Co-founder of Refactor Capital
David Lee is Co-founder of Refactor Capital, a new venture capital fund focused on healthcare. Previously, he was Co-founder and Managing Partner of SV Angel, an angel fund with investments in companies such as Twitter, Pinterest, Dropbox, Airbnb, Product Hunt, Snapchat, and others. Prior to SV Angel, David was at Baseline Ventures, a leading seed-stage venture firm. He was a founding member of Google's New Business Development team and led business development at StumbleUpon prior to its sale to eBay.
He also was a corporate attorney at leading technology law firms.
David has an M.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford, where he was a National Science Foundation graduate fellow; a J.D. from NYU; and a B.A. from Johns Hopkins. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health. David is a survivor of Stage IV Hodgkin's Disease.
In 2011, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz named David as "One of the 7 Most Powerful People in Technology You've Never Heard Of." He has was named one of "The Secret Power Brokers of Silicon Valley" and twice to The Silicon Valley 100, both by Business Insider.
Jeff Clavier
Founder and Managing Partner of SoftTech VC
Jean-Francois “Jeff” Clavier is the Founder and Managing Partner of SoftTech VC, one of the most established seed VC firms in Silicon Valley, having closed 150 investments since 2004. An early angel investor in Web 2.0, Jeff and his team have backed successful startups like Mint (Intuit), Kongregate (GameStop), Brightroll, Milo (eBay), Wildfire (Google), Bleacher Report (Turner), Fitbit, Eventbrite, Sendgrid, Fab, Poshmark and Class Dojo. The portfolio has also seen acquisitions by Groupon, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo and AOL. The firm is currently investing out of its $55M Fund III, making 20 commitments of $500K per year in mobile/cloud saas, monetization infrastructure, marketplaces and e-commerce.
Born, raised and educated in France, Jeff graduated with a MS in Computer Science and a degree in Distributed Computing. He joined Effix, a financial services startup, as one of the initial developers while still at school and eventually led it as CTO.
After 5 years, Reuters acquired the company and Jeff expanded his remit to several product and development organizations in Europe and the USA. In 2000, he moved to Silicon Valley as General Partner for RVC, the $450M venture fund affiliated with Reuters.
In 2004, Jeff left RVC to start SoftTech VC and invest in the early pioneers of Consumer Internet. Within a couple of years, he was being recognized in the media as one of the “super angels”, and in 2007, he subsequently raised one of the first micro-VC funds, $15M Fund II. After three years, and 60+ investments closed on his own, Jeff built a team and raised a larger, $55M Fund III.
One of the early VC bloggers in 2004, Jeff is now a popular conference speaker and social media/TV commentator. When he is not spending time with SoftTech’s portfolio companies, Jeff enjoys traveling, skiing, scuba diving and hanging out with friends and family.
Carl Wescott
SparkLabs IoT Venture Partner
As a child, Carl Wescott lived in Finland, Holland, Switzerland, Malaysia, and Japan. He founded his first companies in Tokyo, while in high school, and since then has had a passion for innovation and entrepreneurship. He has created other ventures in the technology, hospitality, and real estate sectors, in the United States, in Asia, and in Central and South America. More recently, he founded a winery, and sold that, before founding real estate development ventures in Ecuador, Uruguay, Panama, Nicaragua,Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico. As an investor, Carl has been an active angel investor and a VC LP and conducted due diligence (and technical due diligence) for venture capital funds. He has invested in many technology and real estate companies, and some restaurants and films. As an entrepreneur, Carl and his teams have raised over US $450 million.
Originally a technology entrepreneur, Carl sold two software-related companies early in his career. He was a CTO and VP of Engineering for more than 15 years in the Silicon Valley. Carl was previously the founding CTO of GoingOn Networks, which provides an on-demand private academic social network. Prior to joining GoingOn, he served as President of Broadband Mechanics, which designed, built, and deployed DLAs (digital lifestyle aggregators, or branded online social networks).
He led successful DLA efforts for Ziff Davis’ www.1up.com and www.aSmallWorld.net, among other companies, beginning in 2004, well before the founding of Facebook and other prominent social networking companies. He also worked with South Korean company Cyworld to design the U.S. version of their highly profitable social networking site.
He was CTO & VP of Engineering at Tritonic, creating software for financial services customers, such as Goldman Sachs, E*TRADE, H&Q, and Robertson Stephens. While at Tritonic, he was best known for leading teams implementing & optimizing online investing systems at Charles Schwab & Co. Carl has been featured on CNN and on the cover of Internet Week for his role in the software industry and at Charles Schwab. Carl has been on many boards of directors and boards of advisors. Carl earned a BS in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University, a MS in Computer and Information Sciences from University of California-Santa Cruz, a MBA at US University, and was a PhD candidate in Computer Science at University of California-Santa Cruz. He is currently completing a DBA (Doctorate in Business Administration) at California Intercontinental University, with thesis research on The Evolution of Business Strategy for IoT, the Internet of Things.
Jessica Jackley
Co-founder of Kiva
Jessica is an entrepreneur and investor. Her work over the last decade has focused on financial inclusion, the sharing economy, and social justice.
She is best known as a cofounder of Kiva, the world's first p2p microlending website. Kiva lets internet users lend as little as $25 to individual entrepreneurs, providing them affordable capital to start or expand a small business. Since its founding in October 2005 Kiva has facilitated over $880M in loans worldwide.
Jessica currently teaches Social Entrepreneurship at the Marshall School of Business at USC. She is also an independent consultant on social impact initiatives, and an investor and advisor with the Collaborative Fund. She also recently served as Walt Disney Imagineering's first Entrepreneur in Residence, focusing on projects related to corporate citizenship, the sharing economy, and happiness.
Before this, Jessica was a Cofounder and CEO of ProFounder, a pioneering crowdfunding platform for U.S. entrepreneurs which later joined forces with GOOD to create new tools and experiences for their community of creators.
Michael Linse is the founder and Managing Director of Linse Capital. Linse Capital invests in late-stage technology companies in the transportation space. Prior to founding Linse Capital, Michael was a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) for seven years where he invested in sustainable growth businesses like ChargePoint, Proterra, uShip, Telogis, INRIX, Friedola, HYLA, and Redaptive.
Before joining KPCB, Michael worked at Goldman Sachs for over a decade, most recently as the Managing Director of their alternative energy investing team within the London-based European Special Situations Group where he led over 20 investments including Nordex, CMP, and IFCO Systems. Michael joined Goldman Sachs as an analyst in the Financial Institutions Group in 1997 and worked both in the Frankfurt and Hong Kong offices.
Michael earned a BA degree in economics from Harvard University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
John Rhow
Co-CEO of Redaptive Inc.
John Rhow is the Co-CEO of Redaptive Inc, the nation’s largest enabler of turnkey energy efficiency and building IoT solutions for Fortune 500 companies and municipalities. Backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), Redaptive has established a game-changing turnkey financing platform for “smart” lighting, HVAC, and water efficiency technologies.
Prior to Redaptive, John served as a Special Financing Adviser to KPCB's Green Growth Fund. John previously headed Barclays Capital’s Western Region Power and Water Infrastructure practice where he structured and financed utility-scale energy generation and water infrastructure projects.
In addition, John worked over 11 years at Goldman Sachs & Co. serving in various financing advisory and structuring roles spanning corporate finance and off-balance sheet project financing, including public-private partnership (PPP) financing in both the Federal and State sectors.
Over his 15 years in the investment banking industry, John has played an integral role in approximately $20 billion of successful financing transactions on behalf of Fortune 500 companies, infrastructure developers, and municipalities. John is a graduate of Harvard University.
Patrick Riley
CEO of GAN(Global Accelerator Network)
Patrick Riley is the CEO of GAN(Global Accelerator Network) which is a highly-curated community of independent accelerators, corporates, and investors. GAN connects startups to the human and financial resources they need to create businesses and make a meaningful impact in the cities they call home. He's also Managing Partner of GAN Ventures, the VC fund associated with GAN.
He started his career at the American Red Cross where he oversaw the COO's office as its Chief of Staff. Patrick left the Red Cross to manage the sales and operations for a venture-backed healthcare technology company that had a recent exit. Following his passion to support start-up companies around the world, Patrick joined Techstars, a well-known tech accelerator, and oversaw its growth which included the development of GAN. Outside of work, he enjoys spending time with his wife and two girls, bike riding, traveling, and skiing around Colorado.
John J. Wood
Founder of Room to Read
John Wood is the founder of Room to Read. An organization that believes World Change Starts with Educated Children®, Room to Read seeks to transform the lives of millions of children in developing countries by focusing on literacy and gender equality in education.
At the age of 35, John left an executive career track at Microsoft to form Room to Read. The business acumen honed there, combined with his passion to change the world, makes John a unique and inspiring speaker with universal appeal.
He is the author of Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, a memoir that was named by Amazon as one of the Top Ten business narratives of 2006. The book and was featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show and led to John’s lifelong dream – a television interview with Charlie Rose.
At the invitation of former President Bill Clinton, John served three terms on the Advisory Board of the Clinton Global Initiative. He was chosen as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and was named by Goldman Sachs as one of the world’s 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Tribeca Film Festival, is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, and along with Malala Yousufzai was awarded the World’s Children’s Prize, often called the Children’s Nobel Prize, by the Queen of Sweden. John was chosen for the first-ever Microsoft Alumni of the Year award, given by Bill and Melinda Gates.
John has been a three-time speaker at the Clinton Global Initiative and a five-time winner of Fast Company Magazine’s Social Capitalist Award. He has been honored by Time Magazine’s “Asian Heroes” Award and is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. He was selected by Barron’s as one of the “25 Best Givers” in 2009 and 2010, ranking 11th and 9th on the list, respectively.
John holds a master’s degree in business administration from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, a bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Colorado, and honorary doctorates from McGill University and the University of San Francisco.
Frank Meehan
Partner of SparkLabs & SparkLabs Global Ventures
Frank is the Co-Founder & Partner at SparkLabs Global Ventures and a Partner at SparkLabs, Asia’s premier accelerator based in Seoul.
Frank is also the Co-Founder and CEO at SmartUp.io, a fast-growing Micro-Learning platform used by startups, business schools and corporates. SmartUp has been featured in “Best New Apps” by Apple UK and US in July and October 2015. Frank was selected as part of the 2012 Wired UK Top 100 in tech, and Vanity Fair’s The Next Establishment list 2010.
Previously Frank was with Horizons Ventures (HK), representing them on the boards of Spotify, Siri, Summly, Affectiva, Bitcasa, Fixmo, DoubleTwist, Ginger, Desti and Magisto.
Frank started with Ericsson in 1994 as a coder and troubleshooter, lived in Singapore and HK, and then joined Hutchison Whampoa in 2001 and was responsible for the technical integration of the first 3G(WCDMA) networks around the world, launched under the Three(3) brand in multiple countries in 2003. He then ran the Three Groups’ global handset business, and developed and launched a range of products (Skypephone and INQ1), which pioneered mobile and internet communications.
Jonathan Cheng
Seoul Bureau Chief for The Wall Street Journal
Jonathan Cheng is the Seoul bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, overseeing the Journal's coverage of the Korean peninsula, including North Korean politics, South Korean politics and South Korean conglomerates like Samsung, Hyundai and LG.
Previously, Mr. Cheng was a markets reporter in New York, covering trends in the financial markets, with an emphasis on stocks. He started his career as a reporter in the Journal's Hong Kong bureau, where he covered politics, corporate news, markets, real estate and casinos.
Mr. Cheng speaks English, Chinese, French and Korean. A native of Toronto, Canada, Mr. Cheng graduated from Princeton University with a degree in history.
Elaine Ramirez
Freelance tech journalist
Elaine Ramirez is a Seoul-based freelance journalist covering Korean technology, startups and business. Formerly a business reporter and copy editor at The Korea Herald, she writes for Forbes Asia, Bloomberg BNA, Mashable, Quartz, Nikkei Asian Review and others. She also curates Startup Seoul, an English-language news digest on Korea's startup scene. Follow her @elainegija.
Kurt Hoppe
Global Head of Innovation(Connected Car) at General Motors
For more than 15 years, Kurt Hoppe has focused on emerging product and service innovation at the intersection of Connected Consumer IoT devices, digital services and Tier-1 service providers, developing and launching award-winning value-added services for more than 75 million users worldwide.
Kurt currently leads global business innovation efforts at General Motors, driving rapid prototyping and in-market testing of new Connected Car services that are adjacent to traditional GM and OnStar businesses.
Prior to General Motors, Kurt was Vice President of Applications & Services at Prodea, the international IOT Platform company, creating a compelling portfolio of multi-screen media & entertainment, home automation, eHealth and eGovernment services for the world’s leading service providers and their subscribers.
Before that, Kurt was Head of Smart Home Solution Development and Product Innovation for LG Electronics North America, where he founded a team to create consumer and service provider solutions across 5 LG product business units. Kurt also led LG strategic go-to-market engagements for Smart TV, wearables, and multi-screen solutions.
Kurt has held business development, product marketing, and product management leadership roles at Paul Allen’s Digeo/MOXI, 2Wire, Amdocs and Netscape, working with global customers such as AT&T, Verizon, Best Buy, British Telecom, Time Warner Cable, Chrysler, Telstra, and DISH, to name a few.
Kurt graduated at the top of his Computer Science class at the Royal Military College of Canada and studied Human Computer Interaction at the University of British Columbia.
Ray Ozzie
Founder & CEO of Talko
Ray Ozzie is an independent software entrepreneur and pioneer in social productivity, an area more known in the field as Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. He recently founded and serves as CEO of Talko, a startup focused on a new generation of mobile communications apps and services. Through late 2010 he was Chief Software Architect of Microsoft, the company’s most senior technical strategy & architecture role previously held by Bill Gates.
Ozzie came to Microsoft in 2005 through the acquisition of Groove Networks, a company he founded in 1997 to focus on software and services for small-team dynamic collaboration. Prior to Groove, in 1984 Ozzie founded and led Iris Associates, the creator and developer of Lotus Notes. A decade later, Iris was acquired by Lotus and then by IBM. Under his leadership during that period, Lotus Notes grew to be used for communication & social productivity by hundreds of millions at most major enterprises worldwide. Before creating Notes, he worked on 1-2-3 and Symphony at Lotus, on VisiCalc and TK!Solver at Software Arts, and on operating systems at Data General.
Ozzie studied computer science & engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he has been honored as a distinguished alumnus. It was there where he first took in the significance of online community and social interactive systems as a systems developer on the seminal PLATO project.
Honored as one of seven Windows Pioneers by Microsoft, Ozzie was named Person of the Year by PC Magazine, and has been inducted into the Computer Museum Industry Hall of Fame. He has been honored as a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer and has received numerous awards including the IEEE Computer Society's W. Wallace McDowell Award and the SDForum Visionary Award. In 2004 Ozzie was inducted as a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and in 2010 he was named as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
He currently serves on the board of directors of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), has served as a member of the National Research Council's Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, and was a member of the NRC committee that produced the landmark CRISIS report on the societal impact of cryptography.
Peter Guber is Chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group. Prior to Mandalay, Guber was Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, Chairman and CEO of Polygram Entertainment, Co-Founder of Casablanca Record & Filmworks and President of Columbia Pictures. Guber produced or executive produced (personally or through his companies) films that garnered five Best Picture Academy Award nominations (winning for Rain Man) and box office hits that include The Color Purple, MidnightExpress, Batman, Flashdance, The Kids Are All Right and Soul Surfer. Mandalay's most recent release, The Birth of a Nation, recently premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and swept the two top prizes - the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award and the prestigious U.S. Dramatic Jury Award. The film sold to Fox Searchlight for a record breaking price.
Peter Guber is Owner and Co-Executive Chairman of the 2015 NBA Champion Golden State Warriors, an Owner of the three-time National League West Champion, Los Angeles Dodgers, and an Owner and Executive Chairman of Major League Soccer's Los Angeles Football Club (LAFC). He is an Owner of Dick Clark Productions a leading independent producer of television programming including such perennial hits as the American Music Awards, Golden Globe Awards, and So You Think You Can Dance. He is an investor, board member and Chairman of the Strategic Advisory Board for NextVR. Peter Guber is Co-Executive Chairman, with Ted Leonsis, of the new eSports ownership group, aXiomatic, which purchased the controlling interest in Team Liquid, one of the most successful global esports team franchises. He is Chairman of Mandalay Sports Media and a full professor at UCLA.
Peter Guber is a noted author with works including Shootout: Surviving Fame and (Mis)Fortune in Hollywood, which became a 7 year television series on AMC which he hosted. Guber wrote the cover article for the Harvard Business Review titled, The Four Truths of the Storyteller. Guber's most recent business book, Tell To Win - Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story, became an instant #1 New York Times bestseller.
Director of Medical Research at Intuitive Surgical
Dr. Catherine Mohr is currently the Director of Medical Research at Intuitive Surgical, where she develops new surgical procedures and evaluates new technologies for improving surgical outcomes.
An expert in the fields of robotic surgery and sustainable technologies, Dr. Mohr is passionate about realizing the potential benefit that appropriately applied technologies can have in our society. She has had numerous articles published and been featured in the news many times.
Bin Lin co-founded Xiaomi Corporation with famous angel investor Lei Jun in April 2010. He is now President of Xiaomi Corporation and is in charge of Xiaomi’s day-to-day operation, business and product strategy, and supply chain management.
Bin Lin worked at Google Inc as Engineering Director from 2006 to 2010. He founded and led the product development and engineering effort for Mobile, Android apps, and Music at Google China office. Bin and his team successfully launched many Google products including many versions of Google Mobile Maps (GMM) on Symbian/J2ME/iPhone/Android, Mandarin voice search, mobile verticals such as video, dictionary, finance, local, etc., Android Pinyin IME, Android Dictionary, Android News and Weather widget, Google Music (free streaming and download of legal music online), Google Pinyin IME, and various oneboxes. Under Bin’s leadership, Google’s mobile search traffic in China grew from 200k to 26M (SRPV) in 3 years, and GMM usage grew from 0 to 13M (MAU) in 3 years.
Prior to joining Google, Bin worked at Microsoft from 1995 to 2006 and held various senior positions. In 2003 he served as Development Director of Microsoft and co-founded Microsoft’s Advanced Technology Center (ATC) in Beijing. He helped grew the center to over 400 people in 3 years. From 2000 to 2003 Bin was Senior Development Manager at Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) and was in charge of MSRA’s technology transfer effort. From 1995 to 2000 Bin was Software Design Engineer and Development Lead at Microsoft Redmond headquarter. Throughout the entire 11-years of career at Microsoft, Bin made significant contribution to many Microsoft products including Exchange, Windows, IE, Office, Tablet PC, MSN, Xbox, etc. He received Microsoft’s GoldStar Award in 2004.
Bin is also Visiting Professor at Zhejiang University (Hangzhou, China), Zhongshan University (Guangzhou, China), Nankai University (Tianjin, China), and Tongji University (Shanghai, China).
Bin received MS in Computer Science from Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA in 1992, and BS in Electronics and Information System from Zhongshan (Sun Yet-Sen) University, Guangzhou, China in 1990.
Professor at the University of Toronto and New York University & Senior editor for The Atlantic
The Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, Global Research Professor at New York University, and the founder of the Creative Class Group, which works closely with governments and companies worldwide, Richard Florida is perhaps the world’s leading urbanist, “as close to a household name as it is possible for an urban theorist to be in America,” according to The Economist. Esquire has included him on its annual list of “The Best and the Brightest,” and Fast Company dubbed him an “intellectual rock star.”
Florida is the author of several global best sellers, including the award-winning The Rise of the Creative Class (“one of the best business books of all time”—800-CEO-READ), and is a senior editor for The Atlantic, where he co-founded and serves as Editor-at-Large for Atlantic Cities, the world's leading media site devoted to cities and urban affairs. Florida appears regularly on CNN and other news broadcasts and is a regular contributor to the op ed pages of major newspapers and magazines. TIME magazine recognized his Twitter feed as one of the 140 most influential in the world.
Florida previously taught at Carnegie Mellon and George Mason University, and has been a visiting professor at Harvard and MIT. He earned his Bachelor's degree from Rutgers College and his Ph.D. from Columbia University.
President & CEO of the Partnership Fund for New York City
Maria G. Gotsch is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Partnership Fund for New York City (www.pfnyc.org), which is the investment arm of the Partnership for New York City. The Fund, which has raised over $100 million, has built a network of top experts from the investment and corporate communities who help identify and support New York City’s most promising entrepreneurs in both the for-profit and non-for profit sectors. In addition to leading the Fund’s operations, Maria has spearheaded the creation and operation of a number of the Fund’s strategic initiatives, including: FinTech Innovation Lab; New York Digital Health Accelerator; NYCSeed (seed financing for IT/digital media companies); BioAccelerate Prize NYC (proof-of-concept funding for university-based biomedical research); Arts Entrepreneurial Loan Fund (low cost loans for mid-size arts groups); and ReStart Central and Financial Recovery Fund (assistance and funding for small businesses impacted by 9/11/01).
Prior to joining the Fund in 1999, Maria was a Managing Director at BT Wolfensohn (now part of Deutsche Bank), providing strategic and financial advice related to mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, joint ventures and the development of business strategies. Before starting with Wolfensohn, Maria worked at LaSalle Partners in the New York area and for Merrill Lynch Capital Markets in New York and London. Maria has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.A. from Wellesley College. She was also the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to study international relations at the Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales in Geneva, Switzerland.
Maria also is a member of the boards of Reach Out and Read of Greater New York (children’s literacy non-profit), the New York Venture Capital Association and the Lang Fund and serves on the business advisory board of ProPublica (investigative journalism non-profit).
Robert Scoble is an Entrepreneur in Residence at Upload VR, and will be launching his own business inside the "world's best Virtual Reality media company."
As Startup Liaison for Rackspace, the Open Cloud Computing Company, Robert Scoble traveled the world looking for what's happening on the bleeding edge of technology for Rackspace's startup program. He's interviewed thousands of executives and technology innovators and reports what he learns in books ("The Age of Context," a book coauthored with Forbes author Shel Israel, has been released at http://amzn.to/AgeOfContext ), YouTube, and many social media sites where he's followed by millions of people.
Robert is a geek who grew up in Silicon Valley (his dad was an engineer at Lockheed) and since 1985 he has been building online communities. In 2000 Robert started his technology blog, http://scobleizer.com, and his life has been on a rocketship ever since. In 2003-2006 he worked at Microsoft as an evangelist and one of the five guys who started Microsoft's famous Channel9 video community.
Pavan is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor who enjoys working on great ideas with great teams. His investments include Neoteris (acquired by Juniper), myCFO (acquired by Harris), Sigaba (acquired by Proofpoint), Benu, Infoaxe and Trackle (where he was the founding CEO). Previously, he was the Chairman and CEO of Cendura Corporation which he co-founded in 2002. He grew the company into one of the market leaders for data center automation software with an installed base that included several Fortune 500 companies. Cendura was acquired by CA (formerly Computer Associates) in 2006.
Prior to that, he co-founded Healtheon (now WebMD [WBMD]) in 1996 along with Jim Clark, founder of Silicon Graphics & Netscape Communications, and served as its Chief Technology Officer and General Manager/EVP of its Internet Operations. In his General Management role, he was responsible for WebMD’s entire suite of products including its Internet-based ehealth services. During his tenure, Pavan led the company’s transformation from a concept to the worlds largest e-health company approaching a billion dollars in annual revenues, over eight thousand employees and several billion in market capitalization. Pavan’s role was extensively profiled in the bestseller “The New New Thing” by Michael Lewis.
Prior to WebMD, Pavan worked at Silicon Graphics, where he was the General Manager for the company’s Interactive Media Group and was responsible for deploying Time Warner, Inc.’s Interactive TV project in Orlando, Florida. The Time Warner project is widely recognized as the most prominent and sophisticated ITV system ever created and has been the foundation of several advanced technologies and companies (eg. Tivo). Pavan holds a B.S.E.E. from the Indian Institute of Technology (Kanpur) and an M.S.C.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Pavan serves on several Corporate Boards and Advisory Boards. He also served on the board of the US India Business Council from 1999-2009. He is a member of the Band of Angels and TIE Angels.
Kai Huang
Co-founder & CEO of Blue Goji
Kai Huang was co-founder and CEO of Blue Goji, an interactive fitness company that brings motivation and fun to health and fitness. Prior to Blue Goji, he co-founded video game publisher RedOctane and was President and CEO from 1999 to 2009. RedOctane was the publisher of Guitar Hero, which went on to become a multi-billion dollar global video game franchise and was acquired by Activision in 2006.
Prior to RedOctane, Mr. Huang was co-founder and CEO of Adux Software, which was sold in 1999. Mr. Huang started his career as a consultant with Accenture in the San Francisco office.
Justin Kan is an internet entrepreneur and partner at seed fund Y Combinator. Justin has founded many companies including Kiko, the first AJAX web calendar and Justin.tv, a live video streaming platform. His attempt to broadcast his entire life at Justin.tv popularized the term “lifecasting”. The company decided to transition to providing a live video platform so anyone could publish a live video stream. Justin.tv, the platform, launched in 2007 and was one of the largest live video platforms in the world with more than 30 million unique users every month.
Kathryn Minshew is the CEO & Founder of TheMuse.com, a career platform and job discovery tool helping 1 million people a month find inspiring careers at thoughtful companies. Kathryn has spoken at MIT and Harvard, appeared on The TODAY Show and CNN, and contributes on career and entrepreneurship topics to the Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review. She was recently named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in Media for the second year in a row, as well as Inc.’s 15 Women to Watch in Tech. Before founding The Muse, Kathryn worked on vaccine introduction in Rwanda and Malawi with the Clinton Health Access Initiative and was previously at the management consultancy McKinsey & Company. Follow her on Twitter @KMin
Jon Jashni is a media investor and content producer who recently founded Raintree Ventures, an investment and incubation fund operating in the entertainment space. Jashni is also an advisory board member of Evolution Media Partners, a joint-venture with TPG Capital and Creative Artists Agency.
Previously, Jashni was President and Chief Creative Officer of Legendary Entertainment. He joined the company in January 2006 and was integrally involved over a ten year period in evolving the company from a film-financing entity into a leading, diversified, multi-platform media company.
Jashni was essential to Legendary’s building, through complete or joint ownership, a library of marquee media properties and establishing itself as a trusted brand which consistently delivers high-quality, commercial entertainment; including some of the world's most popular intellectual property. In aggregate, Legendary Pictures-associated productions have realized grosses of more than $12.5 billion worldwide at the box office.
As one aspect of his duties at Legendary, Jashni oversaw the development and production of such film projects as WARCRAFT, KRAMPUS, CRIMSON PEAK, GODZILLA, the Jackie Robinson biopic 42, AS ABOVE/SO BELOW, CLASH OF THE TITANS, 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE and PACIFIC RIM.
Prior to joining Legendary, Jashni was President of Hyde Park Entertainment, a production and financing company with partnership deals at 20th Century Fox, Disney and MGM. While there, he oversaw the development and production of SHOPGIRL, DREAMER, WALKING TALL and PREMONITION. Before joining Hyde Park, Jashni was a producer on the successful romantic comedy SWEET HOME ALABAMA and, as a senior production executive at 20th Century Fox, oversaw the highly-profitable EVER AFTER.
Jashni has co-produced two films that received a total of three Academy Award® nominations: the critically acclaimed drama THE HURRICANE, which garnered a Best Actor nomination for star Denzel Washington, and a non-musical reinterpretation of ANNA AND THE KING, which starred Jodie Foster, and earned two Oscar nominations.
Jashni is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Producers Guild of America in addition to serving as a Trustee of the American Film Institute. He holds a BS in Corporate Finance from the University of Southern California and an MBA in Organizational Behavior from UCLA's Anderson School of Management.
Co-Founder of Square, Founder of Mira, and Third Degree
Jim McKelvey is an engineer, entrepreneur, artist, and widely known together with Jack Dorsey as the co-founders of Square, a new mobile payment platform. A revolutionary service that enables anyone to accept credit cards anywhere. His other company Mira, started out as a software company. Eventually, Mira was refocused as a digital publishing company and provides online submission management and traditional print and electronic publishing services for more than 100 organisations from numerous disciplines.
Mike Lee is co-founder of MyFitnessPal, the leading health and fitness platform. MyFitnessPal was acquired by Under Armour for $475 million in early 2015.
Prior to founding MyFitnessPal, Mike co-founded NextC, a venture-funded startup focused on building online communities., During his 20 year tenure in the technology industry, Mike has held leadership positions at several other top start-ups in Silicon Valley, including Palm, Handspring, Beyond.com, and Regis McKenna. Mike graduated summa cum laude from Princeton with a B.A. in economics.
Founder, CEO and Chief Creative Director at Perverse Sunglasses
Toni Ko is a Founder, CEO and Chief Creative Director at Perverse Sunglasses. Prior to founding Perverse Sunglasses, she founded the multi-million dollar cosmetics brand NYX, which was recently acquired by the largest beauty company in the world, L’Oreal, for a reported $500 million.
Discovering a gap in the cosmetics market between prestige brands sold in department stores and mass brands sold in drugstores, Ko created NYX in 1999, with the goal of delivering professional, richly pigmented products at affordable prices. Working as a one-woman show from a 600-square-foot showroom in California, Ko began selling a single item – makeup pencils. She impressively generated two million dollars in sales during her first year, and quickly grew to become a leader in the color cosmetics industry, gaining the respect of such retail giants as Target, CVS and Ulta.
Eugene Wei is Head of Video at Oculus. A graduate of Stanford, Eugene Wei has spent his career working at the intersection of entertainment and technology. At Amazon.com he worked as a product manager on video, third party seller platform, and later AWS. He studied editing at the Edit Center in New York and then directing at UCLA Film School before returning to technology to help launch Hulu and led its product team for several years.
He also co-founded Erly with several colleagues, and after it was purchased by Airtime, he joined to Flipboard to run the product team for two years before joining Oculus as the Head of Video in 2015.
Marc Randolph is a veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur, angel investor and executive mentor. Most recently, Marc was founder of the online movie service Netflix, serving as their founding CEO, as the executive producer of their web site, and as a member of their board of directors until his retirement in 2004. Today, Netflix is the leading streaming video company with over 60 million subscribers across 40 countries and generated over $5.5 billion in revenues. In 2011, Netflix began acquiring original content and produced “House of Cards” with Kevin Spacey. They went on to product and distribute other series such as Lilyhammer, Hemlock Grove and Orange Is the New Black.
Prior to founding Netflix, Marc was on the founding team of more than half a dozen other successful start-ups in the e-commerce, media, enterprise software and portable device markets – all of which went on to IPOs or other liquidity events.
Since leaving Netflix he has been an active angel investor, executive mentor and consultant. He currently sits on the boards of Rafter, ReadyForce, Getable, and the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS); and is a mentor to the executive teams of numerous other startups.
Marc is charming, handsome and modest; and whenever possible, avoids referring to himself in the third person.
Andreas is Wrapp's co-founder and was its Chief Technology Ffficer (CTO) until recently. Wrapp is a leading mobile gifting service that raised over $25 million from investors such as Niklas Zennström (Skype co-founder), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn co-founder) and Fabian Månsson (former global CEO of H&M and Eddie Bauer).
Previously Andreas was Spotify’s first employee and CTO, where he brought together the world-class tech team that designed and built the platform and product for the music service. He was at Spotify from its launch through 3 years of rapid growth. Today Spotify has over 60 million users (15 million paid) across the globe. The company recently raised US$350 million at $8 billion valuation earlier this year.
Before Spotify, Andreas worked for the Swedish online-gaming company Stardoll. Andreas is a board member and angel investor in several companies, and he is frequently hired as an advisor by promising Internet start-ups and venture capital funds.
Author, speaker, Blogger (Previously creative director at various agencies for Apple, Intel, Dell, NeXT, BMW, IBM and others)
Ken Segall is an advertising executive and the man who put the 'i' in iPad. He worked side-by-side with Steve Jobs for 12 years as the advertising creative director of both NeXT and Apple. Segall was instrumental in seeing Apple grow from near bankruptcy to become the world’s most valuable company. Currently, Segall does creative work, branding and product naming for major brands, and regularly blogs about technology and marketing.
To Steve Jobs, ‘simplicity’ wasn't just a design principle. It was a religion and a weapon. The obsession with simplicity is what separates Apple from other technology companies. It's what helped Apple recover from near-death in 1997 to become the most valuable company on Earth in 2011, and guides the way Apple is organized, how it designs products and how it connects with customers. It's by crushing the forces of complexity that the company remains on its stellar trajectory. As Creative Director, Segall played a key role in Apple's resurrection, helping to create such critical ad-campaigns as 'Think Different' and coming up with the 'i' before Apple's key products. As an advertising executive by trade, Segall previously worked as a global creative director at Dell, IBM, Intel and BMW before joining Apple.
Jed McCaleb is the CTO and cofounder of Stellar.org, where he leads technical development. Jed believes in consciously leveraging technology to reduce inefficiency and improve the human condition. He created eDonkey, one of the largest file-sharing networks of its time, as well as Mt. Gox, the first Bitcoin exchange and in 2011, Ripple. Ripple is now the 4th largest cryptocurrency in the world. Recognizing that the world’s financial infrastructure is broken and that too many people are left without resources, he cofounded Stellar Development Foundation in 2014. Jed is also an advisor to MIRI, which researches artificial intelligence for positive impact.
Patrick Dai
Creator of Qtum
Patrick is the creator of Qtum, which is 12th largest cryptocurrency in the world and one of the leaders in China. He is graduated from Draper University and dropped out of his doctoral degree from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Previously employed by Alibaba, and committed to the blockchain technology development, with abundant blockchain industry development experience.
Matthew Van Niekerk
Co-Founder & CEO at SettleMint N.V.
Founded and exited two companies in Japan, then got his MBA in Belgium after which he joined a large financial institution, performing a variety of roles ranging from COO of the consumer finance business line to head of platform innovation for the brokerage and crowdfunding platform. In 2016, he left the bank and co-founded SettleMint.
NADAV HOLLANDER
Founder & CEO at Dharma Labs
Nadav is the Founder & CEO of Dharma Labs - a SparkLabs Global, Polychain Capital, and YCombinator backed R&D shop focused on building blockchain-based credit infrastructure. Nadav is the Project Lead of Dharma - a protocol for generic, tokenized debt agreements - and was formerly an engineer at both Coinbase & Google. Nadav graduated from Stanford University with a BS in Computer Science.
Dr. Hui Lei
Director & CTO of Watson Health Cloud at IBM
Dr Hui Lei is Director and Chief Technology Officer of IBM Watson Health Cloud, an IBM Distinguished Engineer, and an IBM Master Inventor. He also holds honorary professor titles at Sun Yat-sen University, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and The Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Previously he was Senior Manager, Cloud Platform Technologies at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, and led IBM’s worldwide research strategies in cloud infrastructure services and cloud managed services. He received his PhD in Computer Science from Columbia University.
Dr. Lei's technical vision and creative contributions have influenced many commercial software products and services, which range across big data and cognitive solutions, cloud service offerings, middleware platform for mobile and pervasive computing, and e-business tooling. His work has resulted in over 70 patents, has been widely cited in the scientific literature, and has received extensive media coverage.
Dr. Lei is a Fellow of the IEEE, Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, and a past Chair of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Business Informatics and Systems. He has taken part in many international conferences as a steering committee chair, general chair, technical program chair, or keynote speaker. He was recognized with an IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement Award in 2017 and an IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Service Award in 2014.
Dr. Lawrence Wee is a data science practitioner andinnovatorinthehealthsciences.HeiscurrentlyChiefData Scientist at Allianz Asia-Pacific where he directs the development of data-driven innovation platforms for the APAC markets. He works closely with the different stakeholders of the industry, co-creating solutions in the intersection of fintech, insurtech and healthtech.
Prior to this role, he founded the healthcare and biomedical analytics laboratory at the Institute of Infocomm Research (I2R) in Singapore, and served as principal investigator for research initiatives encompassing genomics, precision medicine, digital health and health services. After the stint at I2R, he moved on toZuellig Pharma where he took on the role of Chief Data Scientist.
Dr. Wee sits on the scientific advisory boards of several technology companies, and speaks regularly at conferences on artificial intelligence, digital technology and healthcare. He was previously the President of the Association for Medical and Bio-informatics Singapore (AMBIS), and the current vice-chair of the Chinese-American Pharmaceutical Society (CABS) Singapore chapter. He received his Ph.D.inComputational Biology and Machine Learning from the National University of Singapore.
NICK HALLA
CSO at Impossible Foods
Nick Halla joined Impossible Foods as its first employee and has helped build the company from the ground up. Nick leads corporate strategy, business development and international development. Before joining Impossible, Nick became an expert in food commercialization at General Mills, where he developed and launched several new product lines and designed large-scale food manufacturing systems.
He also has experience in agriculture, having grown up on a family dairy farm, and commercializing new technologies such as solar, energy storage and biofuels. Nick holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and an M.S. in Environment and Resources from the Stanford School of Earth Sciences.
Elliot Han
Managing Director of Argon Group
Elliot Han is currently Managing Director at The Argon Group, the boutique investment bank focused exclusively on the digital finance sector. He is an experienced financial and legal professional in Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and its respective market.
Prior to Argon, he was Head of the West Coast technology equity capital markets team for Jefferies, the mid-market investment bank. Previously, he was an executive director, business unit manager and operating officer for the UK and Emerging Markets teams in the investment banking division of Goldman Sachs in London, where he focused on a variety of industries, including leading the TMT capital markets effort.
Elliot has also spent time as a corporate lawyer at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer based in New York and London. He began his professional career at Credit Suisse / Credit Suisse First Boston in their investment banking division. He was also a White House intern during President Bill Clinton’s administration focusing on domestic policy. In addition, he currently serves as an advisor & consultant to various early-stage technology companies, domestic and international.
Elliot is a graduate of Columbia University (BA), Oxford University (Master’s) and Cambridge University (law and Master’s).
Scott Crowder
CTO & Vice President of IBM Systems
Scott Crowder is currently Chief Technical Officer and Vice President, Quantum Computing, Technical Strategy and Transformation for IBM Systems. His responsibilities include leading the commercialization effort for quantum computers, driving the strategic direction across the hardware and software-defined systems portfolio, leading the agile and Design Thinking transformation, and accelerating innovation within development through special projects.
Previously, Scott was Vice President, Technical Strategy within IBM Corporate Strategy. In this role, he helped define the cross-IBM technical strategy for cloud infrastructure, workload optimized systems, Big Data and Analytics, composable services, software-defined infrastructure and cognitive solutions.
Scott joined IBM in 1995 and was the lead engineer on the industry's first logic-based embedded DRAM technology before serving in a variety of executive management roles within the semiconductor research and development organization.
Scott received A.B./Sc.B. degrees in Electrical Engineering and International Relations from Brown University and a M.A. in Economics and M.Sc./Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
Simon Gustavsson
CEO and Founder at Labber, Principal Research Scientist at MIT
Simon Gustavsson, Ph.D., is quantum engineer with 15 years of experience with experimental quantum computing. He is the CEO and founder at Labber (http://quantum.labber.org), a startup company providing the interface between quantum devices and the classical electronics needed for qubit control and manipulation. He is also a Principal Investigator in the Engineering Quantum Systems (EQuS) group at MIT (http://equs.mit.edu), working on quantum control techniques and implementing small-scale algorithms with superconducting qubits. He has published more than 50 scientific articles, and his work on quantum control, coherence and quantum computation has been cited more than 1500 times.
Carl Wescott
Managing Partner of SparkLabs IoT
As a child, Carl Wescott lived in Finland, Holland, Switzerland, Malaysia, and Japan. He founded his first companies in Tokyo, while in high school, and since then has had a passion for innovation and entrepreneurship. He has created other ventures in the technology, hospitality, and real estate sectors, in the United States, in Asia, and in Central and South America. More recently, he founded a winery, and sold that, before founding real estate development ventures in Ecuador, Uruguay, Panama, Nicaragua,Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico. As an investor, Carl has been an active angel investor and a VC LP and conducted due diligence (and technical due diligence) for venture capital funds. He has invested in many technology and real estate companies, and some restaurants and films. As an entrepreneur, Carl and his teams have raised over US $450 million.
Originally a technology entrepreneur, Carl sold two software-related companies early in his career. He was a CTO and VP of Engineering for more than 15 years in the Silicon Valley. Carl was previously the founding CTO of GoingOn Networks, which provides an on-demand private academic social network. Prior to joining GoingOn, he served as President of Broadband Mechanics, which designed, built, and deployed DLAs (digital lifestyle aggregators, or branded online social networks).
He led successful DLA efforts for Ziff Davis’ www.1up.com and www.aSmallWorld.net, among other companies, beginning in 2004, well before the founding of Facebook and other prominent social networking companies. He also worked with South Korean company Cyworld to design the U.S. version of their highly profitable social networking site.
He was CTO & VP of Engineering at Tritonic, creating software for financial services customers, such as Goldman Sachs, E*TRADE, H&Q, and Robertson Stephens. While at Tritonic, he was best known for leading teams implementing & optimizing online investing systems at Charles Schwab & Co. Carl has been featured on CNN and on the cover of Internet Week for his role in the software industry and at Charles Schwab. Carl has been on many boards of directors and boards of advisors. Carl earned a BS in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University, a MS in Computer and Information Sciences from University of California-Santa Cruz, a MBA at US University, and was a PhD candidate in Computer Science at University of California-Santa Cruz. He is currently completing a DBA (Doctorate in Business Administration) at California Intercontinental University, with thesis research on The Evolution of Business Strategy for IoT, the Internet of Things.
Anantha Kancherla
Director of Engineering at Lyft
Anantha Kancherla is a Director of Engineering at Lyft where he heads up the Level5 software team which is building the self driving car. He loves building projects that can potentially have a massive impact on human kind by bringing in cutting edge technology that is out of the research domain to solve it.
Prior to Lyft, Anantha spent some time at Dropbox helping them with building products that enable teams to collaborate. Before that at Facebook he participated in pioneering building mobile software at scale, for over a billion users all over the world by delivering the core experiences like Newsfeed on mobile phones.
Anantha started his career at Microsoft specializing in 3D Graphics, working on DirectX and Windows. His work enabled Microsoft and its partners to take real-time graphics from the world of Doom and Quake to what we are accustomed to today; in the process revolutionizing the world of Graphics in Games and bringing amazing visual effects to commodity PCs in real-time that were hitherto possible only in movies. This work resulted in a number of innovations including Shaders, which was recognized by a Technical Emmy Award in 2007.
He received his B. Tech in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and M.S. in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There his research focused on Augmented Reality and he published a paper on A Novel Virtual Reality Tool for Teaching Dynamic 3D Anatomy. He is an avid traveller and outdoors enthusiast, frequently venturing out from his home base in California to explore the world of nature and culture with his family.
John Penotti
President of SK Global
John Penotti serves as President of SK Global (www.skglobalentertainment.com), the merged entity of Ivanhoe Pictures, an international local-language content company, and Sidney Kimmel Entertainment (SKE), a Hollywood-based, independent film finance and production entity. John has produced over 45 films and has been a prominent industry executive since his start working with legendary director Sidney Lumet.
With Ivanhoe, John has established a number of key partnerships to produce local-language films in China, India, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Latin America. This includes relationships with Blumhouse Productions to produce a comprehensive slate of local-language genre films in India, including the limited series Ghoul, which debuted on Netflix in August.
Through Ivanhoe Pictures, John produced (along with Color Force) and co-financed (with Warner Brothers) the breakout romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians, an adaptation of Kevin Kwan’s best-selling novel directed by Jon M. Chu (Now You See Me 2), with an all-Asian cast including Michelle Yeoh and Constance Wu. The film opened number one at the box office and is now one of the highest grossing romantic comedies of all time in the U.S. John also executive produced the Taiwanese film Cities of Last Things, directed by Wi Ding Ho, which won the Toronto Platform Prize at TIFF.
John produced the upcoming film Greta, which Focus Features will distribute in 2019. Directed by Neil Jordan (The Crying Game), the film stars Isabelle Huppert and Chloë Grace Moretz. John also produced Going Places, written and directed by John Turturro (The Night Of), and starring Turturro, Bobby Cannavale, Audrey Tautou, and Susan Sarandon.
In 2016, John Executive Produced director Na Hong-jin's Korean phenomenon The Wailing, an Official Selection at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival; the film grossed $50M at the Korean box-office, making it the second highest-grossing Fox Korea film of all time (after Avatar). He also Executive Produced the Academy Award-nominated CBS/Lionsgate feature Hell or High Water, starring Jeff Bridges and Chris Pine, which was also a 2016 Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival and a 2017 Academy Award nominee for Best Picture.
John was the founding partner and President of GreeneStreet Films, a NY-based company from 1994 until 2013. While there, he oversaw the financing and producing of over thirty films, including the five-time Academy Award-nominated In the Bedroom, the #1 box office thriller Swimfan, the studio hit comedy Uptown Girls, Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion, the action-thriller Crank, and the documentary Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos.
In 2015, John relocated from New York City to Santa Monica, CA, with his wife Sheryl and son Luca. Born and raised in Paterson, NJ, John is a graduate of Tufts University, with degrees in Biology and Psychology.
Dinesh C
Chief Creative Officer of CarVi
Dinesh C is the Chief Creative Officer of CarVi where he oversees all product and business development initiatives with the aim of bringing together global partners in offering affordable and impressively design upgrades to today’s cars with safety technology and connectivity and turning data into intelligence for future autonomous vehicles.
With a successful track record of over 15+ years in establishing and managing global businesses, Dinesh C believes in success through passion and creativity. He is also a technically savvy, highly driven and an award-winning global marketing and technical professional.
With an exceptional ability to identify and connect with the right customers and partners, Dinesh move ideas to fruition, optimize market penetration, and motivate teams to be surpass goals. His creativity and drive in starting and expanding a company, coupled with intimate business knowledge, allows him to build emotional attachment with customers and partners. By combining strong technical and business skills with outstanding visuals, Dinesh brings creative approaches to startups and established businesses.
Dinesh started his career with IBM after graduating from Brown University in Computer Science and Business Economics. He then went on and found 3 successful startups which lead to major investments and acquisitions. The businesses range from technology to the food industries with coverage in over 20 countries. Dinesh is a true global entrepreneur and loves building international businesses with team members from multicultural background. He is also a respected thought leader and teaches Entrepreneurship at the University of California Berkeley.
Brody Huval
Co-founder & board member of drive.ai
Brody is a co-founder and board member of drive.ai which spun out of Stanford's AI lab. He has years of experience with AI and working with data infrastructure to support deep learning. He spent four years as a PhD student in Andrew Ng's lab at Stanford researching deep learning within NLP and computer vision before dropping out to co-found drive.ai. At drive.ai he has worked on perception, mapping & localization, and the infrastructure to support deep learning.
Chan Ho Park
Venture Partner at SparkLabs
Chanho Park is the most winningest Asian-Born Major League Baseball pitcher in history with 124 career wins, and the first South Korean-born player in major league history. He played for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Texas Rangers, San Diego Padres, New York Mets, Philadelphia Phillies, New York Yankees, and Pittsburgh Pirates from 1994 through 2010.
Chanho has been an inspiration to so many Koreans throughout the world and has been a great role model for many young people in South Korea. He has been active in many youth programs including the Chanho Park Dream Foundation which supports young baseball talent. Chan Ho has been actively participating in various fundraising events for charity, lectures, concerts and mentoring activities both in South Korea and the U.S.
He recently joined global startup accelerator SparkLabs as a Venture Partner as he continually seeks opportunities to support young generations, especially Korean startups who aim to expand their business into the global market.
Philipp Gneiting
Head of Open Innovation at Daimler AG
Philipp Gneiting, Head of Open Innovation at Daimler AG, is responsible for the initiation and management of STARTUP AUTOBAHN, which is a startup innovation platform located in Stuttgart, Singapore, Beijing and Bangalore. With the platform, he initiated more than 150 pilot projects between Daimler departments and startups worldwide. A two-digit Number of the projects already got Investment from Daimler or became serial applications of Mercedes-Benz. He also established various innovation cooperations, platforms and challenges with external corporations and universities. Philipp Gneiting started his career at Daimler AG in 2007 at Corporate Research of Daimler. Before initiating STARTUP AUTOBAHN, he was Head of the team for Advanced Exterior Concepts and Manager for Research & Technology Policy. Philipp Gneiting studied in Mannheim and completed his Ph.D. about Supply Chain Design in Zurich (Switzerland) and Boston (USA).
David Goh
General Manager at Daimler Mobility Services Africa and Asia Pacific
David is currently responsible for the development of Daimler Mobility Services in the AAP region. He had previously gone through several roles within Daimler including Innovation Lead, Digital Lead, Internal Consultant and Co-Founder of one of Daimler’s corporate venture, AutoGravity. Before Daimler, David was involved in several business ventures and was a management consultant who had served global clients in strategy and M&A agendas.
Joel Pazhayampallil
CEO of BlueSpace.ai
Joel is the co-founder and CEO of BlueSpace.ai. BlueSpace.ai is on a mission to provide safe, accessible, and sustainable urban mobility for everyday people. They are a team of autonomous vehicle industry veterans building the next generation of self-driving technology to deploy practical driverless transportation globally.
Joel has over 8 years of experience in the autonomous vehicle industry and has worked at General Motors, Nissan, and drive.ai. He was a co-founder of drive.ai and raised $77M in venture funding. Joel also grew the team to 180+ people and held management, engineering, and business roles. He also led cross-functional efforts between software, hardware, and business teams to develop and publicly deploy AV fleet. Previously at General Motors, Joel was a core team member for SuperCruise freeway autonomy feature, and it was deployed in production on 2018 Cadillac CT6 as the world first hands-free highway self-driving system. Joel is an expert on full autonomous vehicle stack, including Mapping, Localization, AV Hardware, and Perception. He studied at the Stanford AI Lab and was a Stanford Graduate Fellow. Joel was also named 2018 Forbes 30 under 30. Joel earned his MS at Stanford and BS at Carnegie Mellon University.
Monique Giggy
Entrepreneurship Faculty at Singularity University
Monique Giggy founded Singularity University Ventures (su.org/ventures) and has directly advised over 1,000 startups. She’s also a successful investor, having deployed capital in more than 20 technology startups, and a go-to speaker on all topics related to the startup lifecycle and impact investing. She has built a network of 21,000+ founders, 2,500+ active startups and 600+ experts that she wields to lead others to success. And, she teaches entrepreneurs how to build high-growth, sustainable global businesses that can positively improve the lives of 1 billion people.
Monique’s a seasoned value creator with proven success building/exiting companies, driving turnarounds, and leading high-performing global teams and advisory boards. Experienced in business strategy, product development, product-market fit, go-to-market strategy, business modeling, fundraising strategy, and business development, Monique has contributed significantly to the venture sector.
Mark Cutis
Group Chief Financial Officer at ADNOC
Joined ADNOC May 2018 as Group Chief Financial Officer. ADNOC is the second-largest NOC in the Middle East and produces 3.5 million barrels /day. Formerly at the Abu Dhabi Investment Council (joined March 2008) where he established the de novo “Special Situations” unit. This group now has a 10 year+ track record and focuses on investing globally in idiosyncratic and one-off transactions across the capital structure with geographic and asset class flexibility.
Prior to ADIC was in Japan for six years first with Unicredito (HVB) as CEO and then with Shinsei Bank in the newly created position of Chief Investment Officer. At HVB, originally hired in their New York Branch as Treasurer for the Americas, was responsible for developing and directing their proprietary allocation to Alternative Investments. Subsequently, transferred to Tokyo as the CEO of HVB’s Japanese operations. Previously at Merrill Lynch for 10 years and EBRD for 6 years both in London and NY.
Core expertise is asset allocation, proprietary trading and ALM. Experience includes both direct “hands-on management“ of risk and risk-takers as well as allocating to external managers in alternatives. Experience both on buy-side as well as sell-side. Has worked in NY, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo Moscow and now Abu Dhabi.
MBA from the Wharton School, BA in Economics from Emory University. Elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Speaks French and Greek and has a working knowledge of German.
Han-kyun Kim
Founder of COSTORY
Han-kyun Kim, former CEO of Costory, founded the popular K-Beauty company in 2012. Having begun with the initial capital of just $2000, Costory went on to achieve $200 million in annual revenue within just 7 years. Costory began with the flagship organic brand “PAPA RECIPE” that Kim developed for his young daughter, who suffered from severely dry and sensitive skin. Since then, Costory shot into popularity in the K-Beauty market with $170 million in annual revenue in China alone. Kim, a first-generation beauty blogger and Korea’s first male beauty influencer, began his career in the beauty industry as the brand manager at Amore Pacific. He also appeared in various TV programs and built his presence on social media as a beauty specialist. Currently, Costory owns brands such as PAPA RECIPE, INGA, and MUSTUS and exports its products to over 30 countries, including China, Vietnam, France, and Italy. With the recent launch of ‘BIEUP,’ a health supplements brand, Costory is actively expanding its reach to diverse areas.
Jukwang Lee is the CEO of APR, a beauty and health company. APR joined the media commerce market with the 2014 launch of its flagship brand, AprilSkin, which emerged as a popular skincare brand favored by the 1020 generation with its unrivaled marketing through various social media channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Kakaostory. Currently, APR boasts over 10 million clients on its distribution channels and achieved revenue of $30 million in just two years since its launch, reaching $65 million in 2017. APR currently owns over 10 brands, including MEDICUBE, FORMENT, GLAM.D, and MOTHER’S PICK. With its presence in offline networks such as Olive Young and Lotte Department Store, as well as home-shopping channels, APR is demonstrating sharp growth based on its strong presence in diverse content distribution platforms.
APR was selected as ‘Asia’s Most Influential E-Commerce’ by Facebook in 2016 and featured in ’10 South Korean Startups Breaking Out in 2017’ by Forbes in 2017. The Co-Founders, Jukwang Lee and Byunghoon Kim, were selected as ’30 Under 30 Asia’ in 2017. Lee, expert in Mobile SNS Management and Marketing, met Kim when Lee was an Economics student at Sungkyunkwan University and Kim was a Business Administration student at Yonsei University. They co-founded APR and have been leading the company together since then.
SparkLabs is a startup accelerator founded by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs in South Korea. The focus will be on startup companies from the Internet, online gaming, mobile, ecommerce and digital media sectors. The mentorship-driven program will be three months in length and provides funding, office space, a structure program and access to a top-tier network of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors and executives. SparkLabs seeks to contribute to and help develop Asia's startup ecosystem.
SparkLabs host 2 Demo Days in a year, and it’s become the world’s biggest Demo Day with 2,000 attendees. We are grateful to our sponsors & supporters for this milestone. If you are interested in becoming our sponsor, mentor, or the next hero of our Demo Day stage, please contact us.
The original concept of demo day is an event that showcases new products, services, and business models developed by start-ups to attract investment and funding. Its primary function is to exhibit start-ups who went through the accelerator program and highlights their vision and traction in front of investors. In the case of SparkLabs Demo Day, it is a public event in which anyone can attend, including investors, media, pre-founders, institutions and students, thus raising awareness of the importance of start-up promotion and the role of accelerators in Korea. We also invite experts from various fields to share insights and the latest global tech trends.
SparkLabs Demo Day will be held at COEX in Seoul. The address is COEX Conference Hall Auditorium, 513, Yeongdong-daero, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, South Korea.
Demo Day is an open event that anyone can attend, and the admission fee is free. However, the pitch and booth participation is only for startups who complete the SparkLabs' accelerator program.
You can register from a month and a half prior to a Demoday event through sparklabsdemoday.com. Registration windows typically open in mid-May and mid-October. The admission fee is free.
The main language of the event is Korean. However, overseas start-ups, global mentors, panel sessions and more are conducted in English. All demo day events provide simultaneous translation typically in English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean for the convenience of visitors.
Demo days also include panel sessions with renowned industry leaders, who discuss and share their insight on global technology trends. You can find information about speakers who have visited previous SparkLabs Demo Days here. (링크) Attendees can also directly view and experience various products and services of the SparkLabs Portfolio through booths installed on site.
Unlike other accelerator demo days that might be invite-only and limited to investors, we believe Korea's startup ecosystem needs further development and support. We want to contribute to Korea and Asia's growing ecosystem and encourage entrepreneurship.
We want to provide more opportunities and greater exposure for startups. A wide variety of people in many fields participate in SparkLabs’ Demo Day, and through the convergence of such networks, relationships are formed and unexpected opportunities arise for our startups and the startup ecosystem.
Please email info@sparklabs.co.kr with a subject heading of “Demo Day _ Travel Visa Request”. Provide your full name, nationality, passport number, passport issue and expiry dates, place of passport issuance, and date of birth. Please note that we provide the letter of invitation to anyone who needs it, but we do not provide a Letter of Guarantee.
An average of 13 start-ups including overseas start-ups pitch from the SparkLabs Global Ventures portfolio. Starting in 2017, the number of participating start-ups will increase to more than 20 with the inclusion of SparkLabs IoT Accelerator companies.
Participating start-ups span a wide range of sectors, from the internet, mobile, online games, e-commerce, digital media, healthcare, fin-tech, and IoT sectors to food tech.
Due to a large number of requests, we are considering sending company profiles prior to Demo Day to investors pre-registered in our contact list. If you want to register, please subscribe to the mailing list. subscribe
On the day of event, you'll find a wide range of SparkLabs portfolio companies running booths on site. If you would like to meet a company that does is not participating in booth exhibits, please contact us.
Starting from the 9th Demo Day, special events will be held for investors only. Start-ups can be engaged for in-depth talks the Investor Luncheon (Investor Day), which will be held on the second day of Demo Day. This event is invite only.
The Investor Lounge is located on the right side of the venue. Meet more than 20 different SparkLabs and SparkLabs Global Ventures portfolio companies, as well as prominent thought leaders from all over the world.