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| Diocian manager Park Jun-hyung, left, poses with Shay Feiler, first secretary of economic affairs at the Embassy of Israel at the Korea Final Competition of Start Tel Aviv at Maru180 in Gangnam, Seoul, on July 16. / Embassy of Israel |
Start Tel Aviv to be held in September
By Rachel Lee
Israel has chosen startup company Diocian as Korea's representative for Start Tel Aviv 2015, an annual global competition held by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 2013.
Winning startups from 21 countries — including Italy, England and Spain — will take part in an intense, five-day startup experience in Tel Aviv, from September 6-10. Tel Aviv is Israel's business capital and a leading innovation hub filled with world-class technology talent.
The winning startup experience takes place during the DLD Innovation Festival Week, and participants have the opportunity to meet "the coolest and smartest companies, investors, designers, artists, scientists and cultural drivers from Israel and abroad," according to the Embassy of Israel.
The DLD Tel Aviv Innovation Festival is a global gathering of innovators and entrepreneurs that focuses on the different sides of digital, technological, social and urban innovation.
Three finalists — Diocian, Red Strap and Zero Percent — competed in the Korea Final Competition, which was hosted with the Asan Nanum Foundation at Maru180 in Gangnam, Seoul, on July 16.
The judges were First Secretary of Economic Affairs at the Embassy of Israel Shay Feiler, Qualcomm Ventures Korea CEO Kwon Il-hwan, the Asan Nanum Foundation Director of Startup Initiative Park Young-eun and Koisra CEO David Park.
Diocian, set up in December, 2013 by Kim Doo-hwan, offers a music-networking service that enables musicians to produce, promote and distribute their work around the world.
"As a musician, I've been using about five different platforms, and it's a bit of a hassle," Park Jun-hyung, a manager, said during an interview after the final competition. Park also is a rapper based in the Hongik University area.
"As most musicians have realized this already, it's very difficult to create music all by myself," he said. "We need collaborations while making the best use of what online platforms give to us."
Diocian, a combination of studio and musician, has eight staff and has two offices — in California and Seoul.
"Some of us have a background in music, which works as the strongest point in this business because we understand what musicians need and want exactly," said Noh, who was a singer 10 years ago but gave up due to the industry's fierce competition. He then went on to get a job in advertising.
As much as the team is excited about flying to Israel for the first time, there remains a to-do list to complete before takeoff.
"One of the common yet important questions I've got is how we plan to differentiate Diocian from other similar services," Director Noh Young-tae said. "We're planning to launch a service in which users make music and upload it straight away."
When it comes to profit, the future is bright though they have earned little so far.
"We never did PR or marketing until about a month ago," Park said. "It attracted about 600 artists just by word of mouth, which means we see a huge potential in the coming years. Profits will follow."
Israel, as a global hub for art, culture, science and technology, has attracted more than twice as much venture capital investment as the U.S., and 30 times more than the European Union, according to the Israeli government.
Previous Korean winners of Start Tel Aviv are crowd-sourcing translation platform Flitto, established by Simon Lee (2013), and Ediket, a crowd-sourced proofreading platform set up by Kim Min-kyu (2014). Winning startups from other countries include Splash Mobile (Spain), a mobile applications development platform for the disabled and elderly; Discue (Demark), an online platform for audiovisual live discussions, and Formisimo (England), an advanced analytics tool that tells how visitors are interacting with online platforms.
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