Happy New Year! 2020 is finally over. It was somber for many, crazy for some and forgetful for all. Some things to be thankful for since my father was stricken with COVID-19, near death and recovered. Another praise is the first time since my junior high years that I received…

Ignore the Social Media Echo Chambers (originally published in TechCrunch as “Ignore the Social Media Echo Chambers”) After Election Day, NPR, The Washington Post and various blogs described America as bitterly divided or on the brink of civil war. These were by the same journalists, pundits and intellectuals who only…

Nations should become more open and transparent — China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore are all starting to recover from the COVID-19 outbreak. Although Singapore has recently gone into lockdown and experienced a surge in new cases, we anticipate that authorities there will get the new outbreak under control. …

Five years ago, Frank Meehan, my SparkLabs Global Co-founder, described the goal of our seed-stage fund as follows: “The future is data. We are looking to invest in companies that are generating valuable data around usage patterns, customer behavior, company information.” It was prescient — it has guided us well…

How to close your round with the best value for your company — Since 2013, SparkLabs Group has invested in more than 230 companies, and my general advice to our founders and portfolio companies hasn’t changed: I always tell them not to overthink valuation, know what they need in terms of capital for their seed round and how there is “good dilution” and…

This Lunar New Year is the year of the pig. More specifically, it is an “Earth Pig” year and called by some as the Golden Pig year, which supposedly comes every sixty years. …

(originally published in the Maeil Business Newspaper, which is South Korea’s WSJ, where SparkLabs’ has a monthly column) While catching up with Dino Ha, Co-founder and CEO of Memebox, this week, I was reminded of why we accepted him into our first accelerator batch back in November 2012 when we…

(originally published in The Chosun Daily, which is South Korea’s largest newspaper, where I have a monthly column) Since I co-founded SparkLabs Korea, our first accelerator, with HanJoo Lee and Jimmy Kim in Seoul back in 2012, we have carefully expanded our accelerators across Asia to Beijing, Taipei, Hong Kong…

We just announced SparkLabs Cyber + Blockchain with some good coverage here, here, here, and our official press release is here. Now to provide further details and background information. SparkLabs Group (www.sparklabsgroup.com) has invested in over 200 companies across 6 continents through our accelerators and venture capital funds. …