BeSuccess, a startup platform for Korea, raises funding

James Jung, founder of beSuccess. Photo credit: beSuccess.

Question: how many startup platforms does Asia need? Answer: A lot, investors seem to think.

Following the US$2.2 million funding round of e27, a Southeast Asian media, jobs, events, and database platform for the tech industry, comes news of another investment, this time of beSuccess, a Korea-focused startup platform. The headliner in this pre-series A round (sum of investment undisclosed) is 500 Startups.

BeSuccess operates a media arm, a tech conference called beGlobal, and a database of companies, products, and jobs called Beginning. It focuses only on supporting Korean startups for now.

“We really don’t focus on making our company big,” James Jung, founder and CEO of beSuccess, tells Tech in Asia. “We want to add value to the Korean startup community so that we can support them to find global business opportunities.”

Asia has seen a growth spurt of investments into startups lately, and this explains the interest in startup platforms. Startup funding almost doubled to US$43 billion in the first half of 2016, from US$23 billion in the same period the year before, according to Tech in Asia data.

The caveat however is that most of the money is going to China.

36Kr appears to be the dominant platform in China, while in India, it’s Yourstory, which is seeing the events and startup media space getting overcrowded with new players jostling alongside old ones.

E27 too has a number of competitors in Southeast Asia like Digital News Asia, which has Malaysia-focused coverage, and DealStreetAsia, which covers private equity in addition to venture capital.

Tech in Asia, meanwhile, is a media, jobs, community, and events entity with conferences in Singapore, Jakarta, Tokyo, and Bangalore.

It seems beSuccess occupies a comfortable niche in Korea, a scene which has seen burgeoning investments in startups. Beyond that, however, the market gets crowded.