Charles Pyo, CEO of Wizard Works

By Cho Jae-hyon
Staff Reporter

Charles Pyo, CEO of Wizard Works (http://wzdworks.com), has been selected as one of "Asia's Best Young Entrepreneurs 2009" by BusinessWeek magazine.

Pyo established his company in 2006 as a provider of personalized portal services, with the site offering a wide choice of widgets ― small chunks of code that can drive applications on Web sites.

"The personalized portal didn't take off but its widget services were a hit, so Pyo decided to focus on widgets and has now become Korea's leading creator and distributor of them," the magazine said.

Wizard Works offers widget marketing services and helps build widget-incorporated intranets for companies. All of the heavyweight portals in Korea, including Naver, Daum, Google and Yahoo offer widgets created by Wizard Works.

Pyo has been known as one of the promising young Korean entrepreneurs in the domestic IT industry. He said that other young Koreans should take on challenges rather than attempt to get employed at public companies or other conventional workplaces.

"Many young people are obsessed with bar exams and other tests to become civil servants. I would like to say that, if there are no role models in our society, they should become ones."

Pyo established Wizard Works when he was a junior at Yonsei University. Pyo expects revenue to top 1.5 billion won ($1.2 million) this year and 4 billion won next year.

BusinessWeek has published the list of promising young entrepreneurs in Asia since 2006. Pyo, born in 1985, made the list as the youngest selection among Koreans.

chojh@koreatimes.co.kr