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Bernard Moon is Venture Capitalist, Co-Founder of SparkLabs group and 3x Noonies nominee. In Bernard shared his thoughts on Asian startups scene, investment tips and more! Ask Me Anything session with Hacker Noon community We have gathered the best answers for you in one place: 1. The difference among South Korean, Chinese and Taiwanese startup culuture "In terms of development, China is the most developed, then Korea then Taiwan. We do internal research and rankings by cities though. Beijing, Seoul and Shanghai are the top 3 startup ecosystems in Asia and then there is a gap with Singapore, Taipei, Tokyo and others following." 2. On Korean startups growth "Entertainment/media since kpop has become such a large influence globally. Example, BTS' online concert in June had over 750,000 PAID viewers and generated over $18M. I believe the largest offline concert in the U.S. generated over $3M. Korea is the leader in such areas." 3. The effect of venture capital trends on Asian economy in the next 5 years "It will make it more impactful. Most of middle class growth in the world will come from Asia. 4.9 billion by 2030 and 2/3 from Asia. So as all the major startup ecosystems in Asia mature and play catch up to Silicon Valley, more startups will create more wealth and more influence." The benefit of wealth creation from startups is that it is typically new money and allows people to shift social classes. And hopefully provide a greater benefit if the nonprofit and giving side of a country is developed. 4. Marketing path of Beyond Meet and Impossible Foods quick evaluation "I think their current path has been effective. Distribution through major chains, restaurants and supermarkets. Our nanny bought Impossible's "meat" and made tacos for our kids last week without us asking, and the kids liked it. With the current mood and affect of the pandemic, it could be an optimal time for these companies and others in the space since more and more people are looking to lessen their carbon footprint." Vote for Bernard in: Hacker Noon Contributor of the Year - Founders Hacker Noon Contributor of the Year -  Innovation Hacker Noon Contributor of the Year - Venture Capital for the next . Sign up AMA with Daniel Jeffreys Check the previous AMA with Jeremy Morgan .

Bernard Moon, 3x Noonies Nominee, Co-Founder of SparkLabs group AMA

We just announced with some good coverage , , , and our official e. Now to provide further details and background information. SparkLabs Cyber + Blockchain here here here press release is her SparkLabs Group ( ) has invested in over 200 companies across 6 continents through our accelerators and venture capital funds. Two sectors within our portfolio we have been active in and will be moving forward is cybersecurity and distributed ledger technologies. www.sparklabsgroup.com SparkLabs Group’s investments in blockchain and security related startups. Last winter Brian Park, former COO of , and I started talking about his idea to launch a new startup accelerator since he obtain the rights and spun out AOL’s FishBowl Lab in . He was just seeking for friendly feedback. As we continued these discussions and as he brought on board Mike Bott, former General Manager of , conversations snowballed into a focus on cybersecurity, then cybersecurity and blockchain, and then them becoming part of the SparkLabs Group ecosystem. Startup Grind Washington, D.C The Brandery Our team is excited about the the launch of SparkLabs Cyber + Blockchain for several reasons. We are grateful to be working with Brian and Mike, we love these two sectors and look forward to working with founders within these industries and this is SparkLabs first accelerator in the U.S.! Joining Brian and Mike on their investment committee will be , who has been a mentor for SparkLabs since our beginnings (2012) and a Venture Partner at , our global seed-stage fund. He’s currently CTO at Nimble Collective and has been a serial CTO or CEO at various startups throughout his career. As a VP of Engineering at VeriSign, Rob has managed a group of over 600 engineers, but prefers working with small teams in the startup world. , my Co-founder for SparkLabs Global who learned his trade at Horizons Ventures (Li Ka-shing’s venture capital firm), will also serve on this investment team. While at Horizons, Frank led , invested in Siri and sat on their board, and served on the Board of Directors at Spotify along with a dozen other boards for Li Ka-shing. Rob DeMillo SparkLabs Global Ventures Frank Meehan DeepMind’s Series A We have an inspiring roster of advisors, venture partners, mentors and other people committed to supporting and helping out entrepreneurs who will go through this new accelerator program. The legendary , has joined this advisory board. He is also working on a new security startup, Clear (read ). (7th largest cryptocurrency & blockchain protocol), graciously joined, which I’m personally excited about. , who was my professor from graduate school at Columbia University and an advisor to my first startup. President Crow has been one of our first supporters since we launched in Seoul in 2012. , has also joined. He’s recently launched a new reputation system based on blockchain called , and he’s told me that he’s “all in” in blockchain since a couple years ago. We are truly honored to have , Executive Director at the Center for 21st Century Universities at Georgia Tech and , on board as well. Ray Ozzie creator of Lotus Notes and former Chief Software Architect at Microsoft “Cracking the Crypto War” WIRED Charlie Lee , the Creator of Litecoin Michael Crow, Chairman of In-Q-Tel and President of Arizona State University SparkLabs’ first accelerator Eric Ly, Co-founder & Former CTO of Linkedin HubToken Rich DeMillo HP’s first CTO Our Venture Partners are the second line of support for startups in this new accelerator. Honored to have on board and CEO of . and Chairman of London Trust Media Holdings, is a great entrepreneur and passionate about helping others. , is the former Managing Director at and Director of Investments at Digital Currency Group. We know Ryan since we invested into his startup, Messari, which is seeking to become the “Bloomberg of Crypto”. , and she came highly recommended by , a long-time mentor and supporter of . Samson Mow, who is CSO at Blockstream Pixelmatic Andrew Lee, Co-founder of Handshake Ryan Selkis, Co-founder and CEO of Messari Coindesk Monique Morrow is the Co-founder and President of the Humanized Internet Ann Greenberg SparkLabs Some of the mentors we have asked to help out our startups are shown to the left. These are about a third of the impressive mentors we have signed up so far. Outside of this accelerator we have other experts and leaders from cybersecurity and distributed ledger technologies within the greater ecosystem. while he was a Managing Director at . He is also a Venture Partner with SparkLabs FinTech and our accelerator with . Joyce Kim is the Managing Partner at , our early-stage venture capital fund focused in equity investments into blockchain-related startups. and a serial entrepreneur. She is also not involved with this accelerator, but I assume Brian and Mike will ask her (and Brian Behlendorf) to speak at one of their future events :) Another Venture Partner at SparkLabs FinTech to mention is Spiros Margaris, who was one of the leading social media influencers in fintech (#1), AI (#1) and was a long-time investment professional who is now actively advising and helping out startups. Carl Wescott, our Managing Partner for the SparkLabs IoT & Smart City accelerator, has been active in the blockchain space related to IoT and in general. Carl was best known for building Charles Schwabs’ first online trading platform. The applications and core infrastructure he built scaled to , and hit $25 billion per week when he finally left that project after 5 years. Of course he’s gone on to many other cool and successful ventures, but that one tends to stick with him :) SparkLabs Group Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director of Hyperledger , has been an Advisor to SparkLabs Global Ventures since 2013 Mithril Capital Ping An Insurance SparkChain Capital Joyce is the Co-founder of Stellar (6th largest cryptocurrency & blockchain protocol) also listed here as #2 in cybersecurity . Spiros securely handle over a trillion dollars in transactions in a year As brief background, we have been active in the blockchain space since 2014. Cryex, which was eventually acquired by , was our first investment from our global seed fund, . They were trying to build a FX cryptocurrency exchange in Stockholm (initially in Malmo, Sweden), but it was a bit too early. In 2015, through our accelerator in Seoul ( ), we were introduced to an enterprise blockchain play, , and bitcoin remittance company, . Both of these companies became their respective industry leaders in South Korea. Since then, we have done other investments within this space: Safello SparkLabs Global Ventures SparkLabs Korea Blocko Sentbe Our first investment in cybersecurity was in , which focuses on account takeover prevention. Through Frank Meehan’s network in Sweden, we invested in Castle’s first seed round and then over a year later they were accepted into Y Combinator (W16). So not only was the SparkLabs Group’s first security AND blockchain related investments in Swedish startups, but both were based in Malmo, Sweden! Castle Go MALMO! At SparkLabs Group, whether we invest $25,000 or $1,000,000 into a startup, we do not discriminate and tier our efforts within our portfolio. We are committed to the cause of each startup, so some people might question our wisdom in resource allocation but this our operating ethos. Also whether fundraising, product guidance, marketing, recruiting, PR, or a general sounding board, we seek to support our portfolio companies in big and small ways. No task or work is beneath any partner or person at SparkLabs. Our numbers support this with over 95 startups that have gone through , our first accelerator, the ( ). Our second accelerator was an in Songdo, South Korea. The first batch accepted 16 startups from across the globe with an the accelerator. first batch had to joining ( ), and Ping An Cloud Accelerator, Powered by SparkLabs (our first corporate accelerator) had ( ). These programs invest approximately $50,000 in each startup, so I can confidently state that we have built a strong reputation for helping founders. All of our partners have gone through startup life and most have been founders, so we know how hard it is to start, launch and build companies. SparkLabs Seoul average raise before entering the program is over $450,000 and after graduation is over $3.5 million and our first fund is up over 1,300% IoT & Smart City program average raise of $2.8 million prior to joining SparkLabs Cultiv8’s 8 companies with an average raise of $1.1 million prior just graduated 1st batch on Sept. 18th in Sydney! 10 companies that raised $3.2 million beforehand 1st DemoDay is Oct. 17th in Shenzhen! If you are a founder of cybersecurity or blockchain startup and looking for a great accelerator or early-stage investors, . If you are a company or organization interested in partnering with , contact Brian or Mike. Of course you can contact me too, but better them :) feel free to contact Brian Park (brian@sparklabscyber.com) or Mike Bott (mike@sparklabscyber.com) SparkLabs Cyber + Blockchain

Launching SparkLabs Cyber + Blockchain in Our Nation’s Capital

Time passes like the wind. Five years after we launched the first and almost four years since our , we have invested in . After a lot of hard work, frustration, arguments, laughs and passion to help entrepreneurs across the globe, we have launched 3 more startup accelerators since November 2016 ( in Songdo, South Korea; ; ) and we will soon finalize in Hong Kong. SparkLabs Cultivate in Australia will be ready next year and possibly a couple more accelerators in 2018. SparkLabs accelerator in Seoul first venture capital fund 154 companies across 6 continents SparkLabs IoT & Smart City Accelerator SparkLabs Beijing SparkLabs Taipei SparkLabs FinTech http://sparklabsgroup.com/accelerator-seoul.html (Series A & B) focused primarily on South Korea, . There might be a couple more fund announcements before year end too. Just last week we announced our new $50 million early-stage fund SparkLabs Ventures HanJoo Lee, Jimmy Kim, and I launched accelerator in Seoul in 2012, and the first batch began in December 2012. We brought on as another partner and Eugene Kim joined as a principal to run the day-to-day operations ( ). SparkLabs Jay McCarthy Eugene is a partner with SparkLabs today In October 2013, we combined forces with and to launch a new global seed-stage fund. Frank just left , which is Li Ka-shing’s investment vehicle, and he and Net began discussions to launch a new seed fund covering the U.S., Europe and Israel. Net recently stepped down as CEO of Ginger Software and was Facebook’s first Director of International Business Development & Mobile. I knew Net from his time before Facebook at Maxthon, which was a China-based browser company . Net Jacobsson Frank Meehan Horizons he helped grow to over one billion downloads www.sparklabsglobal.com Net knew that Jimmy, HanJoo and I were thinking about an Asia and U.S. seed fund, but we were planning for it a year down the road. We started to talk that June of 2013 and then we “dated” for about 5 months as the six of us got to know each other. The six of us (Net, Jay, HanJoo, Jimmy, Frank and I) decided that it made sense to launch a global seed-stage fund since entrepreneurs we spoke with from Europe, Asia and the U.S. were planning to go global sooner than later. So we formed that October 2013. SparkLabs Global Ventures SparkLabs Global Ventures is a seed fund that has primarily invested in the U.S., but also in 60 companies across 6 continents Our approach was different than most that we know of in the world. We plan from the beginning to . There is no preferred follow-on investment from our venture capital funds to accelerator graduates. Out of the 77 graduates from SparkLabs Seoul, our global seed fund has only invested in 10 companies after a lead investor was established. Of course the graduates do well anyways since 79% of them receive funding after our program. create each accelerator entity as standalone and successful Our new Series A fund, SparkLabs Ventures, will also not lead rounds for accelerator graduates and will seek to invest in a majority of non-SparkLabs companies. With all of this momentum and growth of our brand and reputation, we know this year and next are important for us to stay true and focused on what brought us here in the first place. . Especially at the accelerator and seed stage of the startup lifecycle, it really is about who are the founders that you invested in and how they respond to adversity, stress, ethical dilemmas, and the general highs and lows of startup life. After we invest our money, we devote our time and resources to each of our companies. Some might call it foolish but whether we invest $25,000 from one of our accelerators (i.e. $50,000 to Drop from our IoT & Smart City accelerator) to $500,000 from our seed fund, . Everyone of our partners have gone through a startup from the conception stage, so we know how difficult and painful life can get so every portfolio company deserves our attention. WE INVEST IN PEOPLE we do not discriminate in our attention to our portfolio companies based on dollars invested SparkLabs IoT & Smart City’s 1st Batch went beyond our expectations. Truly a global program as we planned and the average company was much further along than expected with $2.8M raised prior to joining the program in November 2016. And frankly, most of us have been giving free advice to other entrepreneurs most of our careers, so we are just lucky enough to add some funding with our words, possible insights, and connections. It’s not like our team asks this often, but it is in the back of our minds and something we just naturally seek out to do. We want to help our startups in whatever manner that is needed because we know how hard startup life is and that the odds are stacked against them. If we ask ourselves this and we are not executing up to our own standards, then we need to recalibrate ourselves and step up our commitment. DO WE ADD VALUE? Ben Harris, , presenting at Co-founder & CEO of Drop SparkLabs IoT Demo Day 1 I believe this was recently reflected in the response to our . Many companies that applied to this startup accelerator program already had more than $1M in revenues or raised over $2M in venture capital. The , but I assume they saw the value that we previously added to our portfolio companies or heard about it. The first SparkLabs IoT & Smart City 1st batch had an average of $2.8 million raised prior to joining our program, which was mind-blowing to some of our team members. 1st IoT & Smart City batch majority of companies that applied and the 16 companies in our 1st batch did not need our $50,000 investment This is a year ago, but I’m reusing it here because it is important… Integrity is an absolute starting point. Maybe because many on our team lived in the MidWest (Chicago, Ann Arbor), but we truly believe all a person has is his or her word. We also emphasize this to our companies; don’t lie to your investors, don’t lie to your company’s partners, don’t lie to your employees, and don’t lie to yourself. INTEGRITY IS ESSENTIAL. taken from my prior post about our SparkLabs accelerator Petnet ( ) is a SparkLabs Global portfolio company petnet.io We focus on getting the best people in terms of talent and cultural fit. We love high achievers and we love “good people”, as some Southerners say. We look for people who are transparent, flexible, humble, hustle and simply work hard. You only have to look at the people who recently joined us. Colin Qu, Managing Partner at SparkLabs Beijing, and Edgar Chiu, Managing Partner at SparkLabs Taipei, are both people who several others have told me after meeting them, “He is a super, nice guy… or He’s a really, really nice guy”. Not a“nice guy” or a “good guy” but a “super, nice guy.” Similar comments and praises are stated about William Chu, Managing Partner at SparkLabs FinTech, and our team at (Brian Kang and Chris Koh). RECRUIT THE BEST. SparkLabs Ventures www.sparklabsgroup.com SparkLabs has grown beyond our expectations. In some ways, it has taken a life of its own, so before things got too chaotic we decided ( ) that we should present and organize ourselves in way that entrepreneurs and investors understand the different parts in our network of entities. Well, Frank posed the question, “Shouldn’t we have a group site?” There was some discussion on what we should name this overarching entity. For a small grouping of accelerators and early-stage funds, doesn’t “group” sound too presumptuous since relative to the venture capital landscape our assets under management isn’t that much? Should we call ourselves the “SparkLabs Global Network”, and pay homage to the OG venture capital group which is the Draper Venture Network? What about the “SparkLabs Cluster”, but this would be horrible if we completely fail in a few years and set ourselves up for unlimited jokes as the “SparkLabs Clusterf**k”. So we finally decided on SparkLabs Group :) www.sparklabsgroup.com So here is the . Please visit our new website at and learn more about our accelerators, funds and people. launch of SparkLabs Group www.sparklabsgroup.com

SparkLabs Group… A New Beginning for Our Venture Capital Firm

Last week we just completed our 7th DemoDay where . While our event has become the largest accelerator demo day in the world, we are not misguided in our achievements since we know if Y Combinator opened their doors to the public it would put our event to shame. over 1,800 people attended from throughout Asia Over 1,800 people attended the SparkLabs DemoDay7 with over 350 investors from throughout Asia It is important for our team to continue to generate interest in startups and help the innovation ecosystem in South Korea and Asia grow. Our team at wanted our demo days to encourage new entrepreneurs to break from the walls of Samsung, LG, NHN and Nexon in Korea, to spur new investors and drawing interest from potential corporate partners. SparkLabs DemoDay7 Highlight Video from June 22, 2016 It’s been a long, wild ride since HanJoo Lee, Jimmy Kim and I started on this idea during April 2012 and launched our first batch in December 2012. We were supported by our illustrious advisors, such as Mark Cuban (owner of the Dallas Mavericks and outspoken billionaire), (Chief Internet Evangelist at Google and “a Father of the Internet”) and (Former Chief Software Architect at Microsoft and creator of Lotus Notes). More importantly, we were joined by over for our startups who have been invaluable to the success of our program. Vint Cerf Ray Ozzie 120 active mentors Eugene Kim, Partner and Head of SparkLabs accelerator programs Eventually we were strengthened by our other partners joining us: , who runs the program and operations of SparkLabs. Jay McCarthy, Frank Meehan, Net Jacobsson and Eugene Kim The hard work of and other full-time team members have contributed to our 56 graduates creating over $690 million in equity value, over 800 jobs and follow-on rate of over 75%. Part of the high follow-on rate is the ability for us to attract strong teams. The . I can confidently state that productivity for SparkLabs is one of the best in the world. Eugene Kim, Sophia Choi, Harry Han average raise prior to going through our accelerator program is over $400,000 and funds raised afterwards is over $3 million It has been a fast 3.5 years since HanJoo pitched me and then Jimmy to become the “YC of Korea” and then launching SparkLabs. It hasn’t been an easy road like any new venture, but it has been incredibly exhilarating and rewarding. Being a bit reflective, I wanted to share from growing SparkLabs into a leading accelerator program in Asia and growing our ambitions from becoming the “YC of Korea” to becoming the “YC of Asia.” the top 8 things we learned This mantra is always stated, often cited, but not always executed upon. I believe the success of SparkLabs came with our first hire, which was Eugene Kim, who runs our accelerator operations and program, and each subsequent hire. Eugene was recently promoted to a partner with SparkLabs and he deserves all the praise that comes with our success. 1. Every Hire is Critical. All the founders have to approve a hire because we truly believe every hire is critical. We have had a few times where everyone of us wanted to hire a candidate but the last person said “no”, which we respected. 2. Our team believes that details are critical towards success. From every lighting on our demo day stage to emails written to corporate partners to pixels on our website. We care about the details because we believe excellence is the minimum standard we strive for and want the companies that go through SparkLabs to do the same. Details Matter. Sarah Chung (CEO of Landing Int’l, Batch 7), Net Jacobsson (Partner at SparkLabs & SparkLabs Global), David Choe (CEO of myBox, Batch 7), Frank Meehan (Partner at SparkLabs & SparkLabs Global), Euan Macdonald (CEO of CryWorks / speaker at DemoDay7), Jay McCarthy (Partner at SparkLabs & SparkLabs Global), Rob DeMillo (Venture Partner at SparkLabs Global) 3. Everything is done through relationships. To build strong relationships takes time and effort, so nothing can be treated with a short-term perspective. Relationships Matter. 4. As a baseline, we seek to treat others as we would want to be treated, so we treat people well. If people make mistakes, we want to exercise patience and understanding but also don’t expect the same. Follow the Golden Rule. 5. This applies those partners and people who have worked with us the longest, who contributes the most or who needs help the most. We seek to go that extra mile for everyone in our network, but will go an extra few miles for those who really understand our passion and vision to help out other entrepreneurs. Going Beyond the Golden Rule. 6. Some say perception is reality, so we work hard to embrace all feedback and criticism that we receive. Even if the criticism is a minority view, since we are one of the leaders in South Korea’s startup ecosystem, it is important to listen, learn and improve. Embrace Feedback and Criticism. 7. On the other hand, sometimes the criticism is just too ridiculous, so just have to ignore it. If we can response with little effort and time, then we might do so. For example, we initially received questions (quiet chatter) on whether we really knew people on our website and others in our “supposed global network,” but those doubts dissipated soon after our launch. We invited our advisor, , to speak where he graciously did along with others such as Bin Lin, Co-founder of Xiaomi, and Kai Huang, Co-founder of Red Octane/Guitar Hero, within the first year of our launch. We continue to bring global thought leaders and entrepreneurs to Seoul encourage and inspire the whole startup ecosystem. Ignore the Haters. Ray Ozzie DemoDay7 Panel on VR/AR: Casey Lau (Founder of StartupsHK & Co-host of RISE), (Peter Wilkins, Co-founder, CEO, & CTO of Emergent VR), Euan MacDonald (Co-founder & CEO of CryWorks), Robert Scoble (EIR at Upload VR) 8. . Integrity is an absolute starting point. Maybe because many on our team lived in the MidWest (Chicago, Ann Arbor), but we truly believe all a person has is his or her word. We also emphasize this to our companies; don’t lie to your investors, don’t lie to your company’s partners, don’t lie to your employees, and don’t lie to yourself. Integrity Matters Our team is looking forward to the next 10 years and beyond in building SparkLabs and the overall startup ecosystem in Asia. This is our passion, our drive and our mission. To help entrepreneurs throughout the globe change the world and SparkLabs is our vehicle to do so.

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