Top 50 Angel Investors in South Korea

Founder x5, profitable bootstraps, 3 exits; investor x30+ in Israel, Silicon Valley and Korea; passion for: cyber security, building scalable B2B companies

Daniel Shin is a renowned entrepreneur and investor, with extensive expertise and deep relationships in e-commerce. Daniel Shin is the Founder and CEO of PortOne Global, a leading payment company in Asia and beyond. The company's mission is to empower digital commerce partners across the Asian region. Through PortOne Global, Daniel Shinassists in the growth and development of partner companies and facilitates expansion.Previously, Daniel founded and was CEO of TicketMonster, Korea's leading e-commerce platform with $3.5Bin GMV. He is also a Co-Founder and board member of Fast Track Asia, a company-builder that established and sold multiple businesses including Fast Five (office sharing platform) and FoodFly (food delivery, acquired by Yogiyo).Daniel holds a B.Sc. in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

S Cubic Angels

Taekkyung Lee - Representative Partner @ MashUp Angels

Douglas Guen is the CEO and Founder at PrimerSerial. Entrepreneur and the friend of Startups. He is a Founder and CEO of Primer (2010-now), Founder and CEO of INICIS, INITECH others (1997-2008). Douglas Guen attended Kyungpook National University.

Jay Eum is the Co-Founder & Managing Partner of GFT Ventures.

Richard Seongho Choi

Shin Hyun Sung

Jung-hee Ryu is the Partner and CEO of FuturePlay. He previously worked at FoundationX as a Partner. Jung-hee Ryu attended the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.

Seojoon Kim (서준 김) is a co-founder and vice president of KnowRe, an education technology company that develops digital learning platforms.Kim’s previous career portfolio includes his time as an intern at Sun Microsystem; intern at Olaworks; manager at ½ project; and project manager at Mozzet. He was also the co-founder of edueyes. Aftergraduating from Seoul Science High School, Kim went on to obtain a bachelor’s degree in computer systems engineering from Pohang University of Science and Technology.

Naval Ravikant is the CEO and a co-founder of AngelList. He previously co-founded Epinions (which went public as part of Shopping.com) and Vast.com. He is an active Angel investor, and have invested in dozens of companies, including Twitter, Uber, Yammer, Stack Overflow and Wanelo.

Pietro Dova was Corporate Controller and Finance Director at Google from 2001 to 2007. He was partly responsible for the Google IPO and roadshow, and directed Google’s operational and transactional accounting responsibilities worldwide. Immediately prior to joining Google, Pietro was CFO of Employeeservice.com. From 1996 to 1999, Pietrowas VP Finance of Quote.com, an early online pioneer providing financial news and stock information to active investors. Pietro began his career in technology in 1988 at Oracle Corporation and held various executive finance positions through 1992. From 1993 to 1996, Pietro headed Fulcrum Technologies’ European finance operations based in Paris, France. Pietro received his undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering from Imperial College, London and his Masters in Management from M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management.

Baedal Minjok was created in 2010 by founder Kim Bong-jin.

Young Song joined NComputing as Founder and CEO in 2003.Mr. Song brings over 20 years of technology vision and entrepreneurial leadership with a focus on products that deliver life-enhancing value to education, business and consumers. He has founded and operated several start-up ventures with an inherent talent and track record for turning ideasinto viable products and sustainable businesses. He is also active angel investor through his own investment vehicle, Booga Ventures and Big Basin Capital as a venture partner. He founded and currently is Chief Executive Officer of NComputing group. Prior to co-founding NComputing, Mr. Song was also the founder and CEO of DoubleSight Displays, a company that delivered affordable and cost-effective dual displays to businesses and consumers and successfully acquired by Erae Inc, TV and Monitor company in South Korea. In addition, Mr. Song co-founded and was vice president of product marketing for eMachines, a pioneer in bringing affordable computing to consumers. eMachines went NASDAQ in 3 years and acquired by Gateway Computer. He began his career as marketing director for both TriGem America Corporation and TriGem Computer, Inc.Mr. Song holds a Bachelor of Science in Electronics Engineering from Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea. He is also an active volunteer for several non-profit organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area and lives in Palo Alto with his family.

Lee Seung Ho

Jong-Il Yoon - Venture Partner @ BonAngels Venture Partners

GI Equity (Private Investment Fund)

Han Ki-yong is an individual investor.

Chester is 13 year-long serial entrepreneur with successes such as IPO and M&A with Google. His current company, Ablar Company, is the fourth start-up with a great vision to connect offline world more into online. He worked as a product manager at Google Korea after his last start-up, Tatter&Company had been acquired by Google in 2008.Before Tatter&Company, he founded two more companies, one of which had successfully done the IPO. He also worked as a product manager at SK Telecom, where he developed intelligent personalization system for mobile phone users. Chester received his bachelor’s degree in Management Engineering from KAIST.He's also been an active angel investor and business mentor in the companies like, Ticket Monster (Recently merged to LivingSocial), Paprika Lab, LIFO interactive, Sha.kr Media, Ultra Caption Corp (klassmate.com), Flyfan (clubvenit.com) and J3T (stylesays.com).

Sujay is the 26-year old CEO and Co-Founder of Frontier Car Group (FCG), a Berlin-based, emerging markets-focused automotive marketplace. Sujay co-founded the business at the age of 23. FCG has now raised $575M+ from Naspers, Balderton, and TPG Growth. Prior, Sujay was a partner at Kingsway Capital, a London-based emerging-markets focused fund.Sujay was on the founding team of Hired.com (a talent marketplace) as its COO, which now operates in Australia, Europe, and the US. Before Hired, Sujay entered Harvard at age 15, before leaving with a Thiel Fellowship. Sujay was named one of Forbes’ 30 under 30 and one of Goldman Sachs’ top 100 intriguing entrepreneurs in 2016 and 2018.

Yeo Byeong-min serves as CEO at DTR Partners.

Bashar Hamood is a result oriented professional with versatile experience across diverse organizational domains. He is well versed in the development of marketing strategies, branding, direct marketing, new products/brands launches, analysis, reporting, and positioning.He is an entrepreneur and self-starter with expansive experience in brandawareness and development, community outreach.Bashar is a versatile business manager with proven competencies in optimizing team dynamics uniting diverse agenda to common goal and harnessing strategic and operational drivers to deliver results.He has a strong analytical mind with rigorous study for each case and the output of each variation for each parameter.Bashar loves to take risk and new challenges.

Animoca Brands, ranked in the Financial Times list of High Growth Companies Asia-Pacific 2021, is a leader in digital entertainment, blockchain, and gamification. Animoca Brands develops and publishes a broad portfolio of products including the REVV token and SAND token; original games including The Sandbox, Crazy Kings, and Crazy Defense Heroes;and products utilizing popular intellectual properties including Formula 1®, Marvel, WWE, Power Rangers, MotoGP™, and Doraemon. Animoca Brands’ portfolio of blockchain investments and partnerships includes Sky Mavis (Axie Infinity), Dapper Labs (CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot), OpenSea, Harmony, Bitski, and Alien Worlds. Its subsidiaries include The Sandbox, Quidd, Gamee, nWay, Pixowl, and Lympo.

Justin Waldron is Co-Founder & President of Playco, and previously Co-Founder / EVP of Product of Zynga, the world's largest mobile game company. Zynga IPO'd in 2011 with a $10 billion valuation and over $1b in annual revenue. Justin is an angel investor in Lambda School, Substack, and 60+ other companies. He mentors youngentrepreneurs at The Thiel Foundation's Thiel Fellowship program.

Osuke Honda is a General Partner at DCM Ventures, Osuke previously worked at Mitsubishi Corporation and then at Apax Globis Partners & Co (now GLOBIS CAPITAL PARTNERS & Co.). Having assumed the position of Outside Director of Sansan, Inc. in April 2018, he draws on his extensive experience of investment and business management in makinggeneral management recommendations.Osuke Honda attended Hitotsubashi University, The Wharton School, and Keio University.

Kiha Lee

Erik Peterson is the Founder at DormTrader.

Hesham has been ranked #39 out of top 50 investors (Forbes 2018) based on investment and successful exits. Hesham has invested in +100 startups. He has co-founded more than 40 startups. He has a passion for building innovative start-ups around the principle of developing simple solutions to challenging problems. He is multilingual and can speak,read and write Arabic, English, French. He has also some good knowledge in German and Spanish. Hesham is a founder and CEO of FasterCapital. FasterCapital is an online incubator who has border-less reach. Hesham has already co-founded (as a technical cofounder) and invested as an angel investor in more than 40 startups and has helped expand FasterCapital to have more than 1000 regional partners, a network of 1000 mentors, +500 offices worldwide and more than 400 startups. Hesham has invested and helped improve and refine the product in each of the 40 incubated startups. During his work at FasterCapital, Hesham has co-founded: - co-founded Edunoor.com: online learning platform with social components. - invested in Dooet.com: a discovery and search engine for mobile applications and other content. - invested in Letuscloud.com: Bridging the gap between enterprises and virualization - invested in abcmob.com: Mobile business application. 18 sectors already covered. - invested in Mobayle.com: an instant AppStore creator and customizer - invested in Meody.com: Cross platform messenger with focus on enterprises and operators. - invested in TVlize.com: a platform for social and engaging TV - He also cofounded and invested in Nakkeb.com, BeamGift.com, PickTaxi.com, MobAdv.com, Bazarmaker.com, puttag.com, fulhost.com, Entablet.com, PinProfile.com, mp3ready.com, BookThatbook.com Newsanalyse.com, B2Butterfly.com and many more. He is also a mentor for more than 50 companies. Hesham started his first company ZGroup Mobile in 2002 with less than $20/month and grow it to reach a valuation of $2.5-$3.25 million in 2005 by Public company Incagold plc (it would have been the first company in MENA region to be acquired by a public company). ZGroup Mobile is a developer and publisher of mobile content (mobile games, mobile apps, mobile music, mobile videos) and services. He has been ranked 7th in Baccalaureate tests among 200,000th participants. He has completed his engineering degree at HIAST then he has done an MBA at Edinburgh business school and a Master in computer information science at AABFS.

Cho Man Ho is the Founder of Musinsa.

Kim Sang-Hun

Justin Lubliner is a CEO of the Darkroom.

3X Founder of Earnest, SolidEnergy, and now working on the next one. Formerly a16z and YC. Active angel investor and board member.

Sungjae Hwang is the Founder and CEO of Lounge Lab. He earned his doctorate and master's degree at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and his bachelor's degree at Kwangwoon University.

Alexander Schill

Edith is a venture capitalist, technology executive, and creator of the China Internet Report, and Silicon News.Edith is a General Partner at Race Capital - an early-stage Silicon Valley venture capital fund. A few sectors we are particularly interested in are infrastructure, fintech, and deep tech verticals. She has invested in over 50 startupsincluding Agora.io (Nasdaq: API), Lightyear/Stellar (valued at $1.2B), Silk Labs (acquired by Apple), Chirp (acquired by Apple), Fleksy (acquired by Pinterest), Human (acquired by Mapbox), Solana, Oasis Labs, Hooked, DayDayCook, AISense, and many more.Prior to Race Capital, Edith was a partner at 500 Startups, the world's most active early-stage fund and incubator invested in Twilio, Credit Karma, Grab, and 2000 more companies. Before 500, Edith was the general manager at Dolphin Browser, a Sequoia-backed mobile browser with over 150 million installs worldwide. Edith also worked with many Fortune 500 companies such as Siebel, AMS, AT&T Wireless, and Autodesk.She frequently speaks on China and Silicon Valley technology and the investment landscape. She is also a frequent guest lecturer at Berkeley and Stanford and a commentator on BBC, CNBC, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, SCMP, Techcrunch, etc.Edith attended Harvard Business School, Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Purdue University.

B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering, POSTECH M.S. in Computer Science and Engineering, POSTECH NASA Ames Research Center Research Intern LG Uplus Next Browser Dev. Naver Search Engine Crawler Dev. SK planet RecoPick founder & Team Leader

Matthew Papakipos

David was hired at Google in 2000 as one of the first 200 employees, and was the first executive to lead their international BD, sales, and operations. He launched Google’s first international ads and founded their offices in Asia, Europe and Latam. He hired the first intl. mgmt. teams, and established Google’s overseas business. After Google,David co-founded XG Ventures, a Google alumni fund and was Co-founding Partner of SK Telecom Ventures, a $100M corp. VC fund based in Silicon Valley. His personal and VC investments include over 50 companies with 20+ acquisitions such as Tapulous (acq. by Disney), Posterous (acq. by Twitter), Scoopler (acq. by Google), ABitLucky (acq. by Zynga), Chai Labs (acq. by Facebook), Cue (acq. by Apple), Kabam (acq. by Netmarble), Chartboost, Wish, and many others. David is an LP in Y Combinator and SV Angel. In 2015, he partnered with Michael Bay (Transformers, The Rock) at 451 Media, to lead their tech and media investments and partnerships. David later formed Open Source Studios, a Stanford Business School based advisory group with prof. and two time Oscar winner Bill Guttentag, to help founders of tech & media startups such as MasterClass and Illumix. David is also a Partner at B&C Group, a leading talent mgmt. & prod. co., connecting Korea, Hollywood and Silicon Valley. He currently invests in emerging tech & media companies through his venture capital fund SLVC.David is on the advisory boards of ASES (Stanford Entrepreneurship Society), and HPAIR (Harvard Project for Asian & Intl. Relations).BloombergBusinessweek “Google’s Real Power” flic.kr/p/7FVJgr The Hollywood Reporter: https://bit.ly/2UEQAujDecoding Silicon Valley: goo.gl/ZFAefzTechcrunch: goo.gl/9q9chzTop Angel Investors: goo.gl/4eqfbm“New Silicon Valley Stars of Korean Descent” goo.gl/ZwFCu6"[슈퍼리치]실리콘밸리 뉴 코리안 슈퍼리치" goo.gl/WBQOf0“스타트업 눈앞 이익만..." goo.gl/KB78mCSina News: bit.ly/2QaCqAc

Co-founder and CEO at Dongnae

Tim Draper is the Founder of Draper Associates. He was a Member of the Advisory Board at Mode Media. He attended Harvard Business School.

Song Ji-woo serves as CEO at Jiwoo Company.

Michael founded users. Michael and the team successfully raised $30M in venture capital investment from investors such as Brentwood, Sprout, Intel Capital, Citigroup Venture Capital, and Transcosmos Corporation. In February of 2000, mySimon was successfully acquired by CNET for $700M.Prior to mySimon.com, Michael held positions at Xerox Corp., Intergraph Corporation, TeleVideo, Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., and Jazz Multimedia, Inc. Michael has a BS degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley, MS degree in Computer Science from Columbia University and MBA degree from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He has served on the advisory board of the Stanford Institute of Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) at Stanford University. Michael holds a third degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

Jimmy Iovine, the Chairman of Universal Music Group’s Interscope Geffen A&M Records unit, is regarded as both a legendary figure in the music industry as well as a forward-thinking visionary.The Brooklyn-born Iovine’s four-decade career began when he was just out of his teens. As a recording engineer, he found himself in the studio withJohn Lennon and Bruce Springsteen (Born To Run, Darkness On The Edge Of Town) before setting his sights on being a producer. Building on what he’d learned from the masters, he helped Patti Smith (Easter), Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (Damn The Torpedoes), and U2 (Rattle & Hum) -- all current Rock and Roll Hall of Famers -- achieve career breakthroughs. He also produced Stevie Nicks first solo album (Bella Donna) as well as albums for Dire Straits (Making Movies) and The Pretenders (Get Close).Interscope, the record label that Iovine co-founded in 1990, has come to be widely regarded as the home of music’s most consistently fearless, intriguing, and popular artists, including Dr. Dre, Nine Inch Nails, U2, Mary J. Blige, No Doubt, Marilyn Manson, The Black Eyed Peas, Eminem, 50 Cent, and Lady Gaga. Powered by Iovine’s peerless rapport with musicians, new buzzed-about stars like Azealia Banks, Ellie Goulding, Kendrick Lamar, and Lana Del Rey, are ensuring that that reputation endures.With the rise of hip-hop, alternative culture, and technology, Iovine didn’t rest on his legacy but instead used his credibility and integrity to transform Interscope into a multi-media powerhouse that puts artists and ideas first. “The way I produce records now is I support record producers,” Iovine has said.Iovine co-produced the hit Eminem movie 8 Mile directed by Curtis Hanson and executive produced the critically acclaimed LeBron James documentary More Than A Game.In 2006, Iovine and hip-hop pioneer/producer Dr. Dre co-founded Beats By Dr. Dre, a high-performance headphone and sound transmission company intent on recapturing the fidelity of the studio. “Dre’s and my mission for Beats was to introduce premium audio to a generation that had never experienced the emotion of music as intended by the artists because of substandard ear buds and PCs,” says Iovine.Thanks to the sleekly designed headphones, as well as expansion into smart phones and car audio systems, Beats By Dr. Dre has been widely successful, securing the #1 spot in the billion+ dollar premium headphones industry. Iovine is now expanding the Beats Brand and reputation into the digital music space with Beats Music—the first streaming music service delivering contextually and culturally relevant playlists, personalized for each user, by real music experts. In many ways, Beats Music is Iovine’s latest “supergroup” with former Topspin exec Ian Rogers and Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor will work alongside Beats Electronics President Luke Wood to create the next chapter of the music business and bring streaming music to the masses.For the last two years, Iovine has found a new outlet for his hard-earned wisdom. Most Americans know him as the outspoken and frank mentor who shares his insight and expertise with contestants on Fox’s ratings blockbuster American Idol. Under Iovine’s watchful eye, Idol’s standout performers now release their music through Interscope, whose A&R and marketing strategies have led to breakout careers for Scotty McCreery and Phillip Phillips.

Shin Jae-sik serves as CEO at Nest company.

Brian Kim is Founder & Chairman at Kakao.

Blaine Vess is the Founder of Immeasurable. Attended at Y Combinator.

Jimmy Kim is Co-founder & Partner at SparkLabs Global Ventures. He is also a co-founder & Partner at SparkLabs, a startup accelerator in Korea. Jimmy is co- founder and Chairman of the board of N3N, an interactive software company that mixes passion, creativity and technology to create new interactive user experiences and innovativepresentation solutions. N3N’s client lists include BMW, Infiniti, Nike Golf, Dentsu, Korea Telecom and other leading worldwide companies. He previously served as N3N’s CEO. Jimmy is sought-after speaker on online gaming and technology and has spoke at various conference such as LeWeb, Ad:Tech, and Web 2.0 Expo.Previously, Jimmy was CEO of Nexonova, a game development studio of Nexon Corp that specializes in Social Network Games. Prior to Nexonova, Jimmy served Executive Vice President of Nexon Corp, and Head of Nexon’s Portal (www.nexon.com, market cap: $5 billion) and Web Services. Nexon is one of the most successful online gaming providers, with games such as Maple Story, Dungeon and Fighter, Combat Arms, and Kart Rider. Nexon services over 20 games across 60 countries to an audience of 300 million.Jimmy was the founding investor and active deal adviser of Studio Ex, an online gaming studio that was acquired by Disney in 2012.Jimmy received his B.S. in Engineering from Northwestern University, and also a M.S. in Engineering from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). Jimmy also completed the Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business’s Executive Management Program.

Kim Hyun-Joon is an individual investor.

Shirley Crystal Tan

Primer Saje