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
