Kakao Ventures

Kakao Ventures is one of the early-stage VCs in Korea, with a focus on everything mobile and software. Kakao Ventures believes in harnessing the power of startups to change their world. Their mission statement is to be the backers of smart entrepreneurs who set their courses, in the form of startups armed with a competitive edge, to solve real-world problems. Kakao Ventures specializes in helping entrepreneurs from super-early stages. They have a track record of identifying strong contenders and investing in startup teams at their nascency and also provide startups with access to the tightly-knit "Kakao Ventures Family" of portfolio companies that share the sense of camaraderie and DNA of game-changers.

Anne Ahn

Associate

Eddie Chang

Director

Mike Cho

Senior Associate

Shina Chung

CEO/Partner

Aiden Jang

Principal Associate

Brian Jang

Director

Jade Jung

Senior Associate

Jun Kim

Partner

Jacob Kim

Principal Associate

Matthew Park

Associate

Justin Shin

Associate

Ryan Won

Senior Director

380 past transactions

KOODING

Seed Round in 2017
KOODING.com is the global online marketplace connecting local fashion brands with millennials. We are a technology and data driven company connecting local fashion brands with people around the world. We have a unique automated data and image management system, and inventory free business model. We solve problems that local fashion brands face in expanding globally and problems that international customers face when purchasing local fashion brands.

Zaiseoul

Seed Round in 2014
Zaiseoul, a South Korea-based travel advice service for Chinese tourists. The company’s core service is a detailed information portal for Chinese travellers considering a visit to South Korea, such as accommodation, visa requirements, local payment options, shopping destinations, attractions, restaurants.

Still8

Series B in 2016
In the early days of E-Sports, unrivaled skills and overflowing enthusiasm towards games were the only two requisites to become a professional gamer. Nowadays with the rise of global E-Sports fandoms, performance became only one of many requisites of a pro-gamer. Fans are connected to pro-gamers everywhere through various channels such as SNS and live & video platforms. In order to satisfy their needs and be loved by them, a professional gamer needs more than just playing games. E-Sportainment is the compound word of E-Sports and Entertainment. It’s the most explicit and mission-oriented word to describe what STILL8 does. Combining entertainment factors with E-Sports, we help current pro-gamers to boost their talents and retired pro-gamers to sustain their career. Playing games is one part, amusing fans with various entertainments is another. As so, STILL8 ultimately pursues the E-Sports of the gamer, by the gamer, and for the gamer.

PlayHard

Seed Round in 2016
Indie game developer consisting of 2 people; CEO Jung-Hyeok Shin and AD Gi-Ho Jeong. The team has unique way to combine the fun elements into the indie-specific frx-amework.‘Red Bros’ is casual RPG that allows plax-yers to place and defeat a mercenary/native force in battle with touch-friendly drag and drop functionality. The game will coming out this year in 2016.

Skelter Labs

Series B in 2019
Skelter Labs Inc. develops artificial intelligence based applications. The company was founded in 2015 and is based in Seoul, South Korea.

BlueSpace.ai

Seed Round in 2019
BlueSpace.ai,Inc. develops software systems for autonomous mass transit fleets. The company was founded in 2019 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

Lunit

Private Placement in 2018
Lunit Inc. develops algorithms for general object detection and medical image analysis that help physicians to make objective diagnosis through machine learning technology. It develops solutions in the areas of digital chest X-ray, digital mammography, digital pathology, and fundus photography. The company is based in Seoul, South Korea.

Timetree

Venture Round in 2018
TimeTree, Inc. develops an application to manage calendar schedules. The company was founded in 2014 and is based in Shinjuku, Japan.

Educast

Venture Round in 2018
EdTech

Cashtree

Series A in 2016
Cashtree is an advertising platform on Android for Indonesia market that serves our contents & ads via lockscreen. As an ads channel, we are specializing at facilitating CPI and CPC and CPA campaign.

Babyfriends

Seed Round in 2016
Babyfrineds develops a community platform for parenting mother. Its platform enables mothers to share, empathize, and support their stories while raising children; connect with various stories of their neighborhood mothers who are raising babies of same age; chat on various topics parenting; and find friends. The company is based on Seoul, South Korea.

39 degrees C

Seed Round in 2021
39 degrees C is the Media application development company providing ‘LILAY’ which is a multi-camera live streaming app and ‘feedeo’ which is a video making app with various stylish templates. LILAY, the featured app of our company, shares the camera screens between smartphones to realize a multi-camera without any other equipment. It allows real-time video shooting/transmission by using the mobile built-in technology called WiFi-Direct. It is the unique technology in the world and currently holds a lot of domestic and foreign patent licenses.

CHATIE

Venture Round in 2020
Eineblume Co., Ltd designs and develops Chatie application through which users can chat with each other. The company is based in Seoul, South Korea.

ForceTeller

Seed Round in 2017
Operator of an astrology platform intended to provide a modern, mobile-based experience for users in predicting fate. The company's platform offers various traditional fortune-telling methods including a daily horoscope, monthly horoscope, and Tarot, access to fate and fortune-telling services through leading characters released by the posters, enabling users to know the flow of their luck in advance to find emotional balance and psychological stability.

Jaranda

Series B in 2022
Jaranda Co., Ltd. owns and operates a platform that integrates teachers, parents, and students. The company is based in Seoul, South Korea.

EVR Studio

Series C in 2021
EVR STUDIO is a VR content development company based in Seoul, Korea. To create virtual worlds where various real life experiences meet endless imagination, professionals from game development, Hollywood VFX graphics, engineering, fashion, writing and photography gathered at EVR STUDIO. They are currently focused on VR game development, mobile VR streaming solutions, and creative VR media production.

BRUNT.CO,.LTD

Series A in 2018
Brunt. Co. Ltd. designs and manufactures Internet of things (IoT) based smart home hardware and software. It manufactures Brunt Blind Engine, a device that transforms standard home blinds into smart electric blinds; Brunt PowerStation, a stationary multifunctional device that supplies electricity in a variety of ways; Brunt Plug, a product that controls the power of various electric devices via smartphone; Brunt WIFI Router, a wi-fi router; and Brunt Cord, a portable USB and AC power strip. The company also develops software solutions, including Brunt Sky, an IoT operating server platform that allows remote smartphone control of devices, analyzes the usage patterns of these devices, and helps them learn and act on their own; and Brunt App, a smartphone application that provides remote control and monitoring functions for connected hardware devices. Brunt. Co. Ltd. was founded in 2015 and is based in Seoul, South Korea.

ARGO

Series A in 2021
ARGO provides a one-stop logistics system. ARGO not only manages orders and inventories but also foresees future demand to enhance efficiency for e-commerce operators.

Kinolights

Seed Round in 2021
Developer of movie and television show-based recommendation application platform designed to help viewers to choose what to watch. The company's application provides an OTT integrated platform that uses features like personalized recommendations based on traffic light evaluation, and reviews and tells viewers which OTT platform is showing the searched media when they search for movies, dramas, animations, and TV programs, enabling viewers to find the content that is right for them without wasting time searching each OTT platform.

Kinolights

Seed Round in 2022
Developer of movie and television show-based recommendation application platform designed to help viewers to choose what to watch. The company's application provides an OTT integrated platform that uses features like personalized recommendations based on traffic light evaluation, and reviews and tells viewers which OTT platform is showing the searched media when they search for movies, dramas, animations, and TV programs, enabling viewers to find the content that is right for them without wasting time searching each OTT platform.

Tripstore

Series B in 2019
Tripstore is an O2O platform that makes it easy to search overseas trips. The company has more than one million international travel products from seventy countries around the world, where the users can easily check out their desired overseas travel products.

Rebellions

Series A in 2022
AI chip architects are often inattentive to advanced deep learning features and requirements because they believe software stacks between their silicon and algorithms can provide effective abstract layers. We disagree. We do not think such naively designed chips can efficiently utilize expensive custom silicon resources. The more native hardware supports are enabled, the higher performance is achieved. Rebellions Inc is building genuine AI accelerators by bi-directionally bridging the gap between underlying silicon architectures and deep learning algorithms. We push algorithm boundaries to better exploit silicon budgets, while re-architecting AI processors to incorporate sophisticated deep learning features through silicon-dedicated DL kernels. Our goal is to deliver a domain-specific AI processor along with its optimized software. This approach, together with our unique decentralized programming model, will enable customers to arm with the most powerful yet energy-efficient AI hardware as well as seamless integration.

HealthWave - Korea

Angel Round in 2014
HealthWave (주식회사 헬스웨이브) is a Korean company providing a parental education and patient services platform through animation production. Its primary service, HiChart, provides animated content that helps hospitals, guardians, and patients explain and understand medical content through videos that can be viewed on mobile devices or hospital clinical systems.

Cocoon Games

Seed Round in 2014
Cocoon Games is engaged in the development of mobile games.

ByBox

Seed Round in 2014
One of Korea’s most recognized icons in fashion design and an industry expert in digital content have teamed up to found byBox, the curation commerce service for fashion. Kan Ho Sub was a former mentor on the television program Project Runway Korea and professor at Hongik University. byBox CEO Sae Woon Jung was a Producer at Cheil Worldwide Inc., where he was recognized for his successful execution of IPTV content services. byBox offers boxes of jewelry and accessories created by Korean designers and curated by major celebrities and experts such as renowned fashion stylists. ‘byBox season2’ opened with new contents and services of the brand after large renewal of its online pages in August 2014. From fashion, living, to kids, byBox provides theme products throughout life-style products.

Vlogr

Seed Round in 2020
Vlogr is a SNS platform.

Tidesquare

Venture Round in 2022
TIDESQUARE presents new standards of Life & Travel via outstanding human resources, infrastructure and premium service.

Swatch On

Seed Round in 2018
SWATCHON.COM was launched under the motive to provide a variety of unique, high-quality wholesale fabrics at a reasonable price. Their team is composed of young, creative, professional and motivated individuals crazy and passionate about fashion fabric. And they are here to help you find the perfect fabric for your collection. They assure that you will have great experiences with their personalized approach to each and every client.

MVERSE

Angel Round in 2012
MVERSE (dba Surprise, (엠버스) is a Korean software company that designs and develops mobile accessories and mobile commerce solutions for the open market. MVERSE was established in June 2012 in Seoul, Korea.

Dable

Series C in 2021
Dable, Inc. is B2B Omni-channel Personalization Platform that provides products and contents that users are likely to want to reach by gathering their behavioral logs in online and offline. With experience developing online recommendation platform as a team “RecoPick” in SK planet for 2 years, which has been the pioneer and the best recommendation platform in Korea, they are now aiming to expand their personalization service from online to offline to enrich people’s lifestyle.

Cochl

Seed Round in 2017
Cochl is a research-based company focusing on Machine Listening technology. Most of current sound AI systems were limited in speech recognition and we are making AI understand any kind of non-verbal sounds such as dog bark, laugh, scream, sneeze, water tap and fire alarm. It can be used in a variety of industries such as smart home, robotics, automotive, search engine and so on. The company was selected as a top 4 AI startup in the autonomous system by NVIDIA, Top 15 of SLUSH 100 in 2018, also consecutive winner of IEEE DCASE which is the biggest challenge in this field. Donmoon Lee, Hyungui Lim, Il-young Jeong, Jeongsoo Park, Subin Lee, and Yoonchang Han co-founded the company in Seoul in 2017.

WhaTap Inc.

Series A in 2018
WhaTap Inc. designs and develops a cloud-based software which provides server and database monitoring. It is used to preemptively warn users about potential risks or malfunctions, in real time, across multiple platforms: PC, mobile, and Apple Watch. The company is based in South Korea.

Dable

Seed Round in 2015
Dable, Inc. is B2B Omni-channel Personalization Platform that provides products and contents that users are likely to want to reach by gathering their behavioral logs in online and offline. With experience developing online recommendation platform as a team “RecoPick” in SK planet for 2 years, which has been the pioneer and the best recommendation platform in Korea, they are now aiming to expand their personalization service from online to offline to enrich people’s lifestyle.

Seedpost & Seedpaper

Angel Round in 2013
Seedpost & Seedpaper has secured $470 thousand in angel funding.

Karrot Market

Series B in 2018
Carrots Market is a second-hand direct app for residents near you.

Vitcon

Series A in 2018
VITCON offers products and services that make it easy for anyone to configure IoT. Vitcon develops and supplies “MODLINK”, a new concept built-in controller, which has been created with S/W and H/W technology and experienced accumulated over years. In addition, we provide free software that allows non-software engineers to use IoT by connecting to MODLINK.

Dunamu

Series B in 2015
Dunamu Inc. offers blockchain and securities services. It operates UPbit, a global crypto asset exchange; UBCI, a cryptocurrency market index; and Luniverse that offers blockchain as a service. The company provides securities information service via Stockplus. In addition, it provides investment services. The company also offers its services through a mobile application. The company was founded in 2012 and is based in Seoul, South Korea.

Hyprsense

Seed Round in 2016
Hyprsense provides real-time facial motion capture technology to light up the creation of live animation.

Return Zero

Private Placement in 2020
Return Zero, Inc. develops an artificial intelligence (AI) based voice recognition application that converts phone dialogues into messenger chats. The company through its application provides audio phone messages conversion into messenger text services. The company was founded in 2011 and is based in Seoul, South Korea.

RECON Labs

Seed Round in 2021
RECON Labs is a creator of a cloud-based artificial intelligence platform that makes it easier to transform 2D photographs into 3D ones. The business' virtual reality-based technology transforms photos into 3D models automatically to get a new method of buying, allowing customers and merchants to experience the online commerce sector to boost their happiness and lead to increase sales.

Bayes Holding

Series A in 2017
Dojo Madness GmbH develops a set of tools that helps gamers to master their play. The company offers LOLSumo, an Android and iOS based real-time virtual coaching application for League of Legends that enables gamers to build orders and crucial information about their match; OVERSUMO, an overmatches virtual coach, which features detailed performance analysis, gameplay tips, and hero guides; DOTASUMO, a virtual coach for DOTA 2 players seeking to improve their game. It offers post-game insights, and enables users to analyze and improve his or her gameplay; and Shadow.GG, a SaaS platform providing analytics and data visualizations for Counter-Strike. It also offers BRUCE.GG, a platform that allows gamers to get their own plays as videos, share them with their friends, rate their clips, and coach each other with its tools; and offers automatically generated top scenes, match analysis, and tactical insight for coaching. The company was founded in 2014 and is based in Berlin, Germany.

RECON Labs

Series A in 2022
RECON Labs is a creator of a cloud-based artificial intelligence platform that makes it easier to transform 2D photographs into 3D ones. The business' virtual reality-based technology transforms photos into 3D models automatically to get a new method of buying, allowing customers and merchants to experience the online commerce sector to boost their happiness and lead to increase sales.

Pilleye

Seed Round in 2022
Medility, also known as Pilleye, is a mobile application that lets users count and keep track of pills.

CwaveSoft

Series A in 2016
CwaveSoft was founded by former head director of [Nexon](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/nexon#/entity). It is based in Seoul, South Korea.

Swatch On

Venture Round in 2022
SWATCHON.COM was launched under the motive to provide a variety of unique, high-quality wholesale fabrics at a reasonable price. Their team is composed of young, creative, professional and motivated individuals crazy and passionate about fashion fabric. And they are here to help you find the perfect fabric for your collection. They assure that you will have great experiences with their personalized approach to each and every client.

ONDA

Series A in 2019
T Port Inc. is an accommodation management platform. T Port Inc.'s real-time reservation management book can easily manage all bookings on the computer or smartphone anytime, anywhere.

Datumo

Series A in 2022
SelectStar Inc. develops a cloud-based artificial intelligence data production platform. The company offers Cash Mission, an application that collects and analyze data and enables the users to get rewards for their tasks. Its platform connects the public and the enterprises and allows the users to produce the data accurately. The company caters to corporate clients. SelectStar Inc. was incorporated in 2018 and is based in Daejeon, South Korea.

Business Canvas

Seed Round in 2021
Document-Centered Collaborative Productivity Tool

Minerva Project

Private Placement in 2019
Minerva Project, Inc. is an educational institution that offers under-graduate courses through Minerva Schools at KGI and the Minerva Project. It also operates the Minerva Institute for Research and Scholarship that offers scholarship and loan programs for higher education. Minerva Project, Inc. was formerly known as University of the Brilliant, Inc. The institution was incorporated in 2011 and is based in San Francisco, California.

Mini School

Seed Round in 2017
Mini School EduTech

Jaranda

Private Placement in 2018
Jaranda Co., Ltd. owns and operates a platform that integrates teachers, parents, and students. The company is based in Seoul, South Korea.

Fincon

Angel Round in 2012
Republic of Korea Game Awards in 2009, including five target sectors developed MMORPG C9 won best online RPG key personnel to create a mobile masterpiece Cong team. In February, "Hello Hero 'in the domestic market in the Apple App Store free popular App 1, App 3 in Korea, and I play a popular hit. I play the game app global game rank fifth in the world rise up Hello Hero users' loyalty is high, especially revenue per user (ARPU) kkophim high game. The 40,000 concurrent users, thanks to the release was recorded nine months I play now is to maintain the highest sales of the top 10 apps.

Impressivo

Private Placement in 2020
Impressivo, Inc. engages in developing fabric 3D touch sensors for smart wearables, Internet of things (IoT) devices, automotive, digital healthcare, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) interfaces. The company was founded in 2012 and is based in Seoul, South Korea.

Bratvillage

Seed Round in 2015
Bratvillage develops mobile applications for home repairing services. The company is based in Seoul, South Korea.

UVify

Seed Round in 2015
UVify is a team with strong background in engineering and design for building autonomous drone for everyone.

Laftel

Venture Round in 2018
Laftel Inc. develops and operates digital comics service platform. The company debelops and opetayes a mobile app and web service that collects and analyzes the comic preferences of its readers to recommend an optimal route of comic works located in various platforms The company was founded in 2014 and is based in Seoul, South Korea.

Ripple AI

Seed Round in 2018
AI-based ad-tech solution developer.

OKHOME

Private Placement in 2018
PT. OKHOME MOBILE INDONESIA provides home cleaning service through a mobile application. The company also offers on-demand cleaning services for expatriates in Indonesia. It provides customized services for regular customers depending upon home condition, customer's request. The company's mobile application supports foreign language communication as well as local language. The company was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Wonders

Series A in 2017
Wonders Co.,Ltd. provides logistics and delivery solutions for its customers. The company was founded in 2014 and is based in Seoul, South Korea.

Impressivo

Venture Round in 2020
Impressivo, Inc. engages in developing fabric 3D touch sensors for smart wearables, Internet of things (IoT) devices, automotive, digital healthcare, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) interfaces. The company was founded in 2012 and is based in Seoul, South Korea.

CHATIE

Venture Round in 2019
Eineblume Co., Ltd designs and develops Chatie application through which users can chat with each other. The company is based in Seoul, South Korea.

Standigm

Series A in 2016
Standigm applies cutting-edge AI technologies to drug discovery. AI and biology experts team up to build a real-world AI model for the pharmaceutical industry. We currently focus on predicting new indications for existing drugs, called drug repositioning through the deeply trained AI model with molecular features of drug responses and drug uses. Standigm generated tens of drug candidates for cancers, Parkinson’s disease (PD), autism, fatty liver diseases (NASH) and more. We promise practical benefits on time and cost in pharmaceutical industry by eliminating some of the uncertainty in the drug discovery process.

Timetree

Venture Round in 2019
TimeTree, Inc. develops an application to manage calendar schedules. The company was founded in 2014 and is based in Shinjuku, Japan.

Bratvillage

Series A in 2016
Bratvillage develops mobile applications for home repairing services. The company is based in Seoul, South Korea.

MobileToong

Seed Round in 2019
MobileToong

Grepp

Seed Round in 2017
Grepp, Inc. supports all activities for education, exchange and problem solving to enhance developers' competitiveness and helps everyone participate in software development. they also teach their children to understand and use the value of software to develop creative problem solving skills. Helping developers find the right career path for their dreams and helping them find valuable people to create software that can deliver the highest value to their customers. Excellent and enthusiastic developers and companies can meet and help us realize their dreams.

BlueSpace.ai

Private Placement in 2019
BlueSpace.ai,Inc. develops software systems for autonomous mass transit fleets. The company was founded in 2019 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

Lunit

Private Placement in 2020
Lunit Inc. develops algorithms for general object detection and medical image analysis that help physicians to make objective diagnosis through machine learning technology. It develops solutions in the areas of digital chest X-ray, digital mammography, digital pathology, and fundus photography. The company is based in Seoul, South Korea.

Dable

Series A in 2016
Dable, Inc. is B2B Omni-channel Personalization Platform that provides products and contents that users are likely to want to reach by gathering their behavioral logs in online and offline. With experience developing online recommendation platform as a team “RecoPick” in SK planet for 2 years, which has been the pioneer and the best recommendation platform in Korea, they are now aiming to expand their personalization service from online to offline to enrich people’s lifestyle.