FuturePlay: Asian Tech-centric Startups worth Investing in

In 2006 Junghee Ryu founded Olaworks, an augmented reality technology company, which would be acquired by Intel in 2012. That a Western tech giant the size of Intel acquires Korean tech startups, especially a technology-driven one, doesn’t happen often. The Olaworks case is, according by Mr. Ryu, by chance: Olaworks and a Silicon Valley-based tech company, both of which were funded by Intel Capital, reached partnership before the former was acquired by Intel. That company continued the collaboration with Olaworks and helped it become part of Intel.

Now Mr. Ryu and his team want to make it happen for more tech-centric startups in South Korea or other Asian countries. FuturePlay is a venture capital firm he co-founded to invest in and help technologies or products by those startups grow big.

Instead of investing in smart young founders fresh out of college with tech ideas which may take time to develop or fail at all, FuturePlay plans to lure talented and experienced engineers at big tech companies like Samsung who may have had mature ideas in mind and are capable of  realizing them.

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