SparkLabs Group’s Monthly Update
June 10th, 2019
Latest News From Our Portfolio and Network
SparkLabs Korea DemoDay13 on June 26th!


Attend the largest accelerator demo day in the world with over 2,500 people expected to watch our 13th batch present! Over 400 investors and over 200 corporate professionals from across Asia will also attend. Registration and details are here .

Past highlight videos are here and here . For those visiting from abroad and planning to attend, please contact us for our corporate hotel rates a t info@sparklabs.co.kr
Gen.G Raises $46M from Will Smith, NEA and Battery

Congratulations to Kevin Chou, Michael Li, Chris Park and team! SparkLabs Korea , our very first accelerator, invested in Gen.G (previously known as KSV) and they were a part of our 10th class. Here is Michael Li, Co-founder of Gen.G, presenting at our DemoDay10 .

Populus Raises $3.1M to Help Cities Make Sense of Mobility Data

Congratulations to Regina and team at Populus ! We love this mobility data and analytics startup. One of our SparkLabs Global Ventures (global seed fund) investments based in San Francisco. More on their funding round here at TechCrunch .
Lyft Goes Public!

One of our late-stage investments through SparkLabs Global Capital that we participated in with some of our LPs during Lyft's Series F round in 2016. IPO coverage is here .

We remain bullish on the company. Some recent news is here:

DocDoc Named to Global Digital Health 100


DocDoc is one of our SparkLabs Global investments in the healthcare space. This Singapore-based company was named to the Global Digital Health 100, which is one of the HealthTech industry's premier awards as it celebrates innovation and entrepreneurship. More information is here .
Swingvy Closes $7M Series A Led by Samsung Ventures

Congratulations to Jin, Tho Kit and team! Swingvy raised a $7 million Series A from Samsung Ventures, Aviva Ventures, Bass Investment and others. This was Samsung Venture's first SE Asia investment since Swingvy's HQ is in Singapore. Media coverage is here, here , and here in TechCrunch .

Swingvy is a graduate of SparkLabs Korea's 8th batch (2016 winter).
Memebox’s Path to Global Dominance


Bernard Moon's interview of Dino Ha, Co-founder & CEO of Memebox . This Medium post was originally published in the Maeil Business Newspaper, which is "South Korea’s WSJ" where SparkLabs’ has a monthly column.

"Korea is the first to bring ideas to market in the world, but it was always someone else that scaled it. Memebox wants to do both." - Dino Ha
Health2Sync and Novo Nordisk Pharma Partner in Japan

Health2Sync , one of our SparkLabs Global Ventures portfolio companies based in Taipei, signed a partnership with Novo Nordisk Pharma to expand digital diabetes management to healthcare providers and patients in Japan.

More news is here and here .
Michael Crow Named to Fortune's World's Greatest Leaders

Congratulations to Michael Crow, President of Arizona State University! Fortune recognized him in their annual list of the top 50 World's Greatest Leaders .

Michael Crow is also an advisor for SparkLabs Group and our partner in launching the first accelerators where we work with major research universities across the globe.
SparkLabs Ventures Leads Allgainze's $3.4M Series A

Our early-stage venture capital fund for South Korea and SE Asia, SparkLabs Ventures , recently led Allganize 's $3.4 million Series A. They were joined by other Korean and Japanese VC firms, such as Global Brain, Bass Investment, Laguna Investment, and Fast Investment.

The company provides deep-learning based Natural-Language Understanding (NLU) and conversational AI for enterprise . Official press release is here .
Deserve Named as Best Credit Card for College Students by NerdWallet


NerdWallet’s 2019 Best-Of Awards is out, where they spent hundreds of hours to select the best financial products for consumers. Deserve , one of our SparkLabs Global portfolio companies, was selected for "Best Credit Card for College Students" . Congratulations to Kalpesh and team!
Regina Clewlow, CEO of Populus, Named to SF Business Times 40 Under 40 2019!


San Francisco Business Times named Regina Clewlow, Co-founder & CEO of Populus, to their 40 Under 40 list is across all industries from startups to Fortune500 companies. Big congratulations to Regina!
Dilution: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Bernard Moon 's advice to founders on fundraising, seed-stage valuations and negotiations was published in TechCrunch.

TechCrunch is a leading tech news site owned by Verizon Media with over 21 million pageviews a month. Bernard's article is here .
SSenStone Wins People's Choice at Pitch@Palace Korea 1.0


3 SparkLabs portfolio companies ( SSenStone , PiQuant , and DoubleMe ) out of 15 startups were chosen to participate in the Duke of York's Pitch@Palace on May 15, 2019 at The Shilla Seoul. SSenStone won the People's Choice award !
UK’s Next Prime Minister Should Back Business, Not Bash It

Frank Meehan, our Co-founder, was part of a group of influential people from the UK's tech ecosystem that signed this letter to the editor at The Financial Times.

You can read it here beyond their paywall through this Twitter link.
Squirrel, the Budgeting App, is Changing Lives

Squirrel , a SparkLabs Global portfolio company and part of our follow-on relationship with Barclays Accelerator's first two batches. This London-based company is led by Mutaz Qubbaj, who is a CEO that our team loves.

Anyway, Squirrel received a big testimonial and love in this op-ed:

Aergo Pitches at Deconomy 2019

Phil Zamani, Chairman & CEO, pitched at Deconomy in Seoul.  Blocko / Aergo was part of SparkLabs Korea 's 6th batch and later received investment from our Series A fund in South Korea,  SparkLabs Ventures.

Aergo's project backers include Sequoia China, Arrington XRP, GBIC and others.

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