Weekly VentureSquare Stories are summaries of some of the week’s top posts relating to the Korean startup and venture Industry.
RingBlog’s Myung Seung-eun met with some of the people that are making things happen at the Fast Track Asia program.
Today five members of the Fast Track Asia team came to the office. They are people who live a fast life and have experienced the triumphs of large success and the frustration of small failures. I sat down for a casual chat with our guests; Kim Beom-seob, Choi Seok-won, Seo Suk-yeon, Park Pyo-soon and Park Jin-soo.
Fast Track Asia is an incubator which has been put together in a collaboration between Stone Bridge Capital, Inside Venture Partners, the CEO of Ticket Monster Shin Hyeon-seong and Chester Roh, the CEO of ABLAR Company. The group’s reason for doing what they’re doing? “Just for fun.” Of course there are several more important reasons for taking on such a big project, but it would not be wrong to say that they are doing it because they want to try something new and meaningful.
After some 600 people unexpectedly applied for the program it was a tough job to sift through all the applicants and find out exactly what type of people they were looking for. Kim, Park, Choi, Seo and Park were all on the judging panel and having clear guidelines for selecting and rejecting people made it difficult. Of course, selecting candidates by simply scanning documents is anything but easy. Nevertheless, eventually 200 candidates were selected and contacted by phone. Out of these 200, just 20 were called up to make presentations.
Later this year, four team leaders will be chosen first and then selection of the individual teams will be made. Once ready, these teams will be told to present a service or product within 3 months. The final decision will be made within a year and teams that aren’t successful will be judged as to whether they will receive a second chance. Successful teams will be given help to accelerate their business with initial capital, mentoring and investment relations. For those entrepreneurs that put it all on the line this year, the opportunity is there for the taking.
Hello Nature – Going Against the Norm
These
are some unique kids. These days startups mainly aim to enter the
‘Social, Location, Mobile’ based market. “Hello Nature” are different,
they work in the field of agriculture. It’s not common to hear about a
group of young people running a service which involves them walking
through dirt and making partnerships with farmers twice, or three times
their own age. CEO Park Byeong-yeol is the founder of Hello Nature.
“I’m
originally from the countryside so we often eat fruit at home but the
same fruit in Seoul doesn’t taste as good and twice the price.”
Taking
this problem, Park made a team and founded his company. One of the main
factors was the high marketing margin which was 80% more than the cost
of production. Hello Nature wants to help get better tasting fruit into
the hands of consumers for cheaper prices while creating better value
for producers who have been taken advantage of by distributors. Park
commented on why he chose agriculture.
“While
studying agricultural economics I came to know the difficult situation
that our domestic agricultural businesses are facing. After going to
these areas myself I felt a price gap between local prices and the
prices at supermarkets. In that context, I thought that by somehow
making the distribution process more innovative it could be more
valuable to society.”
You can view Hello Nature’s blog and photos of their team out in the field here.
Last Wednesday Samsung released its new Smart TV in front of both media and bloggers. Many experts over the last couple of years have talked about the future of Smart TVs and how we will interact with the devices. Already interfaces such as Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Kinect are being used widely around the world and it has been predicted that the upcoming Apple would also use voice interaction.
At the Samsung event, the new device was presented under the title of ‘Smart Interaction’ and divided these into three categories; See, Listen and Do. The TV recognizes speech and turns on or brings up a menu when greeted with the phrase “Hi TV!”. Other commands included switching the channel, channel names and numbers. “Do” refers to the camera installed in the TV which recognizes the users hand once raised which can be used like a mouse to access the menu on the screen. Items on menus can be selected by closing the palm of your hand. Finally, “See” refers to facial recognition which recognizes different users watching the TV and switches to customized channels and settings for that user. Other interactive features such as games, a special kids zone and a fitness service were also announced at the event. As Smart TV technology begins to more homes, tech startups will no doubt be looking for ways to bring their software or services to such devices.
Startup conference BeLAUNCH2012 is beSUCCESS’s (Formally OnSuccess) first conference to be held on June 13th and 14th at the Yangjae aT Center. Speakers from leading companies including Amazon, Google, Twitter and Nexon will be attending. International media channels such as VentureBeat, TechCrunch and Gigaom will also be there as well as leading Korean venture capital companies; Strong Ventures and XG Ventures. Web, mobile, enterprise and game based startups will also be competing at the event and have until the end of March to apply. Registrations can be made through the Belaunch website here.
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