Most Koreans are addicted to the web, I wondered; Seoul must be a breeding place for new web ventures? I approached Chang W. Kim, to get an idea of what is going on. Chang is CEO of the biggest blog portal (80%) in Korea. He explains his views on European projects, the Seoul web-scene and funding in his region.
Chang: “I think it can be said that the startup industry in Korea is still relatively small, although there is a web climate in Seoul, entrepreneurs meet at barcamp meetings, we have something similar to lunch 2.0 and there are conferences. However, from the investors side, there are not enough good startups in this region.”
Chang has written before about why so little Korean companies get ‘Techcrunched‘. He thinks that it’s related to the lack of efforts to bring the Asian Web 2.0 innovations to the attention of the rest of the world. “Less effort to get these companies known, less attention to Asian Web 2.0 industry, less venture money flowing in, less number of startups, and so on.”
I asked Chang if he would see Korean/European web 2.0 projects work together in the future.“Frankly, when Koreans think about web 2.0, they usually think about Silicon Valley, not much about Europe. But if a company is good, I don’t think there is particularly a reason why Korean companies should NOT work with Europeans. When I was at Samsung, I worked with lots of European companies.”
Chang believes that online games are the best money making business models in Korea.
- Introduction to the South-Korean web serie
- A profile of the connectivity in South Korea
- Why so little Korean web companies get ‘Techcrunched’
- Introduction to five popular Korean websites
- Social community Cyworld a trendsetter in E-commerce?
- Search engine Naver is best in localized results, example for others?
- Search engine Empas.com is ready for a comeback in Korea
- Daum: boring, but innovative in user generated content
- Why most Koreans stopped using auction sites
- Conclusion of the South Korean web profile serie
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4 Comments
Joop… Another great post! My understanding is that Korea is in amongst the most the top three tech savvy countries on the planet. This is one fact that the English speaking people of the world do not regularly consider. In fact Korea sponsors many tech projects that would not get a “look in” inside the west, outside the likes of M.I.T, Berkeley and sundry advantageous “development scenarios”. So why doesn’t the “TechCrunch” thing happen? Well… Quite frankly, there is no need for it. We’ll be buying those outcomes as products in six month’s time.
Cheers
Didn’t realize it before, but I think you hit the spot there! Many things are quite common here, example is: 3G technology is used for many years in this country, Korea is currently experimenting with 5G… Thing is that outside Korea, we are moving to 3G right now. Guess the Techcrunch happends on adaptation on local market. Thanks Lawrence!
Joop… One thing that I neglected to mention, which is highly relevant, is the Korea as a nation is “really into” Wb 2.0/3.0, in fact we can say that as a nation they are paving the way. Thanks again for bringing this to mind. Be well.
Лучше и не напишешь.
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