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Dong-ho Kim and the credit hidden in a cash register
A shop can have loyal customers, steady sales and a bank that barely understands it. Kelvin Kim has spent a decade trying to make the numbers tell a fuller story.
Nakyang Seong’s long road from Yahoo to tire cords
Before he became co-CEO of HS Hyosung Advanced Materials, Nakyang Seong led Yahoo Korea and Doosan Dong-A. His career connects search engines, dictionary apps and the industrial materials inside everyday products.
Roi Nam and the trouble with a good number
Roi Sungpil Nam has spent a decade helping marketers work out what their numbers mean. Now the Airbridge co-founder is sharing the CEO role and asking how much of the work software can do for itself.
Hank Lee and the trouble with separate boxes
A metallurgical engineer became the first unified CEO of Marsh and Mercer in Asia. Across risk, talent and a rather memorable dog adoption, Hank Lee’s career keeps returning to the business of making connections.
Ramzi Toubassy and the long way back to Seoul
He began at AIG in New York in 1996. After building insurance distribution teams across Asia and leading AmMetLife in Malaysia, Ramzi Toubassy returned to Korea with a familiar question: how do you make a large insurer work better for the people buying its promises?
Ilhwan Yoon and the Useful Art of Changing Your Mind
A puzzle game failed. A small slot machine inside it offered a clue. Ilhwan Yoon followed that clue overseas, helping turn five founders’ experiments into Bagelcode’s global games business.
Biodance made the mask worth waiting for
A Korean skincare company found its opening in an unusually slow product: a mask worn for hours. The harder trick was teaching customers why they should wait.
Alexander Min and the Second Life of a Grain
A food-industry consultant noticed what happened after the useful part was supposedly gone. At RE:harvest, Alexander Myoung Joon Min is trying to give that leftover grain another career.
Sanghoon Park and the education of a founder
He began by investing in other people’s companies. At Illimis Therapeutics, Sanghoon Park is applying those lessons to a more personal undertaking: building a company where other founders can grow.
Jinu Kim and the sentence worth saving
Before Liner answered questions, it helped people underline sentences. Jinu Kim has spent a decade following that small act of attention toward a larger ambition: search that people, and now other AI systems, can use with confidence.
Daniel J. Yun and the missing minutes inside the box
Before co-founding Willog, Daniel J. Yun ran warehouses and trucks. Now he is building a record of what cargo experiences - and connecting that evidence to the decisions, disputes, and insurance that follow.
Jihyun Yoon and the trouble with a perfect record
In food distribution, Jihyun Yoon discovered that a tidy temperature log could conceal a messy journey. His work at Willog now connects cargo evidence to the decisions people make - and the losses insurance can cover.
RSQUARE found the gap between buildings
The Seoul company built its commercial property business by collecting what the internet missed. Now it sells both the expertise to close a deal and the data to question one.
Younghoon Park and the difficult art of helping a startup grow
From a Korean handheld-computer company to GS’s venture investments, Younghoon Park kept returning to the space between a promising product and a working business. At dcamp, his answer became a year-long growth program - and a contested change of direction.
Young Whan Park and the case for a smaller room
After leading research inside larger institutions, Young Whan Park co-founded Avelos Therapeutics in Seoul. His next chapter turns on a practical question: how much can a small company accomplish when experience, resources, and responsibility are shared?
Jaiseung Choi and the business of one less thing to do
A loyalty app taught Spoqa’s co-founder how much work a customer will refuse to do. From café counters to restaurant orders, Jaiseung Choi has kept returning to the same question: what can we take off someone’s hands?
Blockwave Labs and the business of making money move
First came wallets, then loyalty points, then trading vaults. Now the Seoul builder is bringing its blockchain experience to the less glamorous business of payments and settlement.
Kelvin Kim and the value of a quiet afternoon
Before Cashnote became a daily tool for millions of Korean businesses, Kelvin Kim went looking for a moment when shopkeepers had time to talk. His second company grew from what he heard between the lunch rush and dinner.
Mihwa Kim and the art of being hard to please
Before Biodance reached international shelves, Mihwa Kim built a business around a demanding question: how does a good product find its customer? Her route from television demonstrations to the product desk offers an answer in several acts.
Hoshik Shin and the price of a missing connection
A broken coal deal sent Hoshik Shin looking for a better way to trade. With Tridge, he carried that question into the global food market, where a useful connection can change a price - and a growing business can still struggle to pay its own way.
Jae Park and the value of a second purchase
Before Biodance reached international beauty counters, Jae Park was asking why a customer would come back. His route from Hyperconnect to Beauty Selection runs through repeat purchases, a focused bet and the practical work of growing abroad.
Steve Hong and the business hidden in a broken game
A game developer’s cloud troubles gave Steve Hong a new business. At Cloocus, he is applying the same lesson to AI: getting technology to work is a job of its own.
John Lee and the buildings the maps missed
Before RSQUARE could put commercial property on a screen, someone had to knock on the door. John Lee built his business around that unglamorous task, then found more than one way to sell what it revealed.
The $299 Seoul Checkup: How Himedi Turned Healthcare Friction Into a Concierge Business
A routine physical in America can feel like an appetizer. Himedi sells the Korean alternative - dozens of tests in one morning - then handles the translation, booking and nerves around it.
The Accelerator That Bets on Atoms, Not Apps
Everyone wanted to fund the next app. N15 built a workshop for the people who make things you can hold - and turned Korea's biggest electronics market into a startup factory.
Yoochun Kim
Yoochun Kim (Kim Yoo-cheon) is the founder and CEO of YC Corporation, a Seoul-based digital transformation company he started on April 1, 2022. As an authorized Autodesk partner, YC supplies CAD, CAM, MES and PLM software plus hardware to small and mid-sized Korean manufacturers - the metal shops, tool makers and injection molders that most smart-factory programs skip. Kim built the company to over 7 billion won in annual revenue in roughly two years, taking no outside investment and funding growth entirely through solution and service work.
AYC Fund
AYC Fund is an AI-native crypto hedge fund out of Y Combinator's W22 batch, founded in 2021 by MJ Kim in Seoul. It builds systematic, rules-based trading engines for digital-asset markets and now runs a private, invite-only program for qualified clients - high-net-worth individuals, family offices, and advisors - where capital stays in the client's own exchange account and the fund trades through read-and-trade API access rather than taking custody.
Stipop
Stipop is a sticker infrastructure company that lets any app add a searchable library of 150,000+ stickers with a single line of code, through its API and SDK. Founded in Seoul by roommates-turned-cofounders Tony Park and Daniel Cho, it grew a marketplace of thousands of global artists, powered sticker features for Google, Microsoft Teams, Canva and Adobe, and joined Snap's Yellow accelerator and Y Combinator (S21). It has since expanded toward monetization tools for character-IP creators and AI chat products.
YC Corporation
YC Corporation is a Seoul-based digital transformation company that helps small and mid-sized Korean manufacturers go digital. As an official Autodesk partner, it supplies and consults on CAD/CAM/PLM software (Fusion 360, AutoCAD, Inventor, PowerMill), builds its own YC Smart Line MES, and sells the hardware - CNC routers, laser markers, 3D printers and IoT sensors - to run it. Founded in 2022 and bootstrapped, the company reached roughly 7 billion won in revenue by mid-2024 by focusing on shops that earlier smart-factory programs overlooked.
Illimis Therapeutics
Illimis Therapeutics is a Seoul-based biotechnology company developing protein-based medicines for central nervous system and immune diseases. Its proprietary GAIA (Gas6-mediated Anti-Inflammatory Adaptor) platform builds bispecific fusion proteins that engage the body's TAM receptors to clear misfolded proteins such as amyloid-beta through phagocytosis without triggering the inflammation and ARIA side effects associated with existing antibody drugs. Founded in 2021, the company raised a $42 million Series B in July 2025 and is advancing a lead Alzheimer's candidate, ILM01, toward an IND by the end of 2027.