There will be an ICO event in Seoul organized by Memorandum Capital.  Memorandum Capital is known for their ability to get investments for blockchain startups at the closed pre-sale stage by setting up a kind of roadshow meetup events all across the world.  Therefore, they have a great network of investors from Asia, Europe, and North America.  Their main focus is building a lasting relationship between investors and startups.  Furthermore, their team has already brokered deals worth over $4 billion.

This Friday, May 25th, 2018.  They will be coming to Seoul and holding an invitation-only event.  They will showcase 4 up and coming ICO projects to Seoul.  These 4 projects were selected from over 300 ICO startups.  In addition, Memorandum Capital has backed these 4 projects to ensure their high quality and potential.

These 4 ICO projects include.

Germany – TravelerToken – an impressive startup with a dream team of serial entrepreneurs with several exits combined with top-managers from international corporations.

The Netherlands – Aimedis, a health-tech startup already in use in major hospitals.

Lithuania – Papyrus, an ad-tech startup with 4 offices in different continents and funded by the creator of $400M rev ad-tech company myTarget.

Singapore – Desico, a unique platform to issue, buy and sell security tokens in full compliance with the law.

VIP VC Event in Seoul

In addition on Saturday, May 26th, these projects will be presented to major investors and funds over a private VIP dinner.

The event this Friday is for ICO investors and anyone with an interest in the cryptocurrency industry.  The event will take place at 7 pm at the L7 Gangnam Hotel

The ICO event in Seoul, specifically designed for ICO and VC investors.  In addition to anyone with an interest in the cryptocurrency industry. Furthermore, the event will be held on 25 May at 7 pm in L7 Gangnam Hotel (415, Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Korea, L7 Gangnam, 9th Floor).

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I was a part of the Y-Combinator VC syndicate.  So what that did was we invested in every single company coming out of Y-Combinator, so we did that for about 2 years and as part of that we would do office hours and mentoring for startups.  As a venture capital investor, it is a great opportunity.  Even though we won’t invest all the time, getting to know the startups and getting to know the founders at the acceleration stage is a great mutual benefit.  They get some advice from us.  Also, they get to know them a little bit earlier.  I’ve helped mentor companies at Y-Combinator as well as SparkLabs and other accelerators programs around the world.  It is a great experience and what we constantly encourage startups to do as they think about being at an accelerator or when they are in an accelerator program is to grow.

I realize this is a very simple thing to say but often people might approach the acceleration as “hey if I go then I can start to grow”.  Well, no one does anything for you.  Even if you are a part of an accelerator program.  Therefore if you have a growth mindset, to begin with, that even without this program you will grow and get traction.  I think that mentality is what we continue to encourage entrepreneurs.  As they enter accelerator programs then they can even go faster with that mindset, to begin with.

Mentors in Accelerator Programs

The mentors in an accelerator program are very important.  Whether you are at Y-Combinator or SparkLabs that do diverse startups, they will have someone who might specialize in your area.  Whether you are in security, healthcare, hardware, or etc.  There will be someone within that program.  Therefore getting to know who that person is, is very important.  Unlike a vertical accelerator like MOX, a startup might have to do a bit more digging when it comes to a more diversified fund.  Both have their mutual benefits for both models, but I feel it is really important to understand exactly who specifically you will be working with during that program.

Goodwater Capital

We at Goodwater Capital feel our relationships with accelerators are very important and meaningful.  We treat them with a lot of care.  This is because it is a repeat game and you just want to treat people well in the ecosystem.  I think that what we are seeing more and more is that it takes many people to sail a ship.  You need lots of different investors around the table.  So having a diverse investor set that includes both an accelerator and traditional venture capitalists in very important.

In addition accelerators like Y-Combinator are raising their own venture funds.  Therefore you are increasingly seeing more convergence between venture capital and seed or accelerator funds.  Those lines are blurry.  But what I think is great about it is that it is not an “or”, working with an accelerator, it can be an “and” to then also work with venture capitalists.  So I think it is just philosophically, we are very open to it.  They are very important relationships in that we can work together for the benefit of the startups.

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When I first came out of college, my first job was actually a startup in Korea.  A few years later I was back in Silicon Valley and I started my second company there.  For me, it has been very natural to be a bridge between Silicon Valley and Asia and Korea specifically.  In 2011, our investment firm Maverick Capital really started investing in Korean Startups aggressively.  We were the first institutional investors in Kakao, we lead a very early round in Coupang, Viva Republica, Memebox, and the payment app Toss.

Meeting the Global Standard

We’ve been very active in other parts of the world too, China, Southeast Asia, and obviously North America.  The way we look at it is, can a startup meet a global bar for excellence.  Can they achieve some massive scale?  Whether they are here locally like Kakao who have built a 9 billion dollar company in South Korea alone.  So look to see if the startup can meet the global standard that we have.  When we look at Korean companies, we know that Korea has such a great consumer market.  They have one of the highest GDP per capita, great infrastructure, wireless penetration, and fast LTE.  All these elements make for a great home market to grow your business.  Then when you think about going beyond Korea, you take Memebox for example.  It started in Korea and now they are in China, Southeast Asia, they have even done amazingly well in the United States.  They’ve made partnerships with Ulta Beauty one of the largest distributors in North America.

Innovation in Korea

For Korea, it is thinking about what can you export, what is the product, whether it is beauty, whether it is gaming (Kakao), whether it is some financial tool.  Korea is one of the densest countries in the world.  You have the population of 55 million in the size of land equivalent to Indiana.  This means that you can innovate whether it is with delivery, or with communication, so Korea itself is like a kind of accelerator for innovation.  You take the amazing infrastructure that Korea has and you export that globally.  5 years ago I was not a big believer in this.  However, I saw what MemeBox did and what they are able to do in terms of taking this to other markets.  I am a big believer now that you can take what you learned here in Korea because it is such an innovative market and bring that excellence to other boarders.

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I am what people like to refer to as “Internet 1.0”.  That term was thrown around in the mid-90s.  My first gig on the internet was LYCOS.  If you remember LYCOS, then I know that you are old because that was over 20 years ago.  At the tender age of 23, I brought out LYCOS U.S. to LYCOS Korea, LYCOS Japan, and LYCOS China.  Then I was able to launch China.com as the CFO and it was listed on NASDAQ.  That was the first internet IPO out of Asia on NASDAQ.  From then on I became more of an investor type, I started with SoftBank.  I opened up the venture capital in Korea and in China.  Then it has just been a lot of investments into the old 1.0 models such as mail.com and DAUM.

Over the last 20 years, I’ve been investing in and have been executive of, sat on boards of, six different IPOs and publically listed companies.

Where the market is as I see it.

100 years ago in the U.S., the world looked very different.  The biggest companies in the world were mostly manufacturers.  The ones that actually supplied materials like steel companies, oil companies, etc.  Then about 50 years ago, was what we would consider kind of the height of the consumer market.  This is where you have your car companies, your IBMs, your service companies.  Now we are all tech or some form of tech.  New media, digital media, and the biggest companies like Apple, Alphabet, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Alibaba, Tencent, etc.  The companies that are actually setting the agenda and the mood of markets globally are usually tech, media, online, app economy, type of companies.   That is where we are today.

The Asian Market

Although the U.S. is the single largest market in the world, Asia cannot be ignored.  Somewhere between China, Japan, and Korea and in that order.  In terms of market size, you have three of the 12 largest economies in the world.  Technology moves extremely fast and arguably a lot of the models that became successful overseas are actually modeled after what already happened in Korea, sometimes a bit too early.  Whether you are looking at the GDP growth percentage or population or income explosion.  All of the numbers that are the biggest globally in terms of change are definitely in Asia.

The Korean Market

It is not just that the economy is getting big, Korea has been in the top 20 for the last 15-20 years.  What is changing now is the huge growth of the middle-income market.  This is not unique to Korea or Asia.  Globally there is a growth of the midmarket that is the base of the consumer market.  The mix of the geography and the market being as robust as it is and it being much more consumer-oriented where most of the product or services that you’d want to create.  You are not making it for the top 1% that are the millionaires or billionaires because they are a very small segment of the population.  Obviously, you are not targeting those that can’t afford your products and services.  You are going for that big fat part of the curve that actually has the interest and the money now to buy.  That is actually very unique, certainly in Asia but globally this is a trend. Therefore, all the products and services that you’d want to be marketing would be hitting this market.

So what does all that mean? 

That means that especially in Asia, the businesses that you are trying to grow has to address that fat part of the bell curve that is able to buy and the models that you have to pursue.  Whether it is the technology tweak or the service tweak, it will be different than the traditional models of the Internet 1.0.  These days it has to be specific, focused, and that is the challenge for all the entrepreneurs that are trying to start businesses today.  It doesn’t have to be an earth-shattering technology or service.  There are many “me too” models in Asia that have worked.  Alibaba is nothing more special than an E-bay.  They are just addressing that middle-income market in China so they have a much bigger market to play with.

Even with clones and with new technologies, there is a lot of room to grow because what else is happening is that there is actual internationalization.  With the new app economy, there are very few barriers and other than localization, language, and culture.  There really isn’t the reason why you shouldn’t think more globally.  All those companies need capital.  Unless you have a rich uncle or an Aunt that is going to provide the seed funding, you need to actually have “Smart Money”.  Most companies that I’ve been over the last 20 years.  Money is just one part of the equation.  What you really need are steady hands, experienced business people who can actually guide you through the growth of the business.  You need to find capital that actually works well for you.

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