How did I start to dream of 10B$?

What partners do I need to realize my dream of AAA? This was my first question in October 2017 as I was preparing for the Across Asia Alliance (AAA), a global alliance involving VCs and Accelerator in Asia.

In essence, the Across Asia Alliance is a community of organizations such as start-ups, investors and accelerators. But communities are essentially “people” gathered. Therefore, the identity, competitiveness and attractiveness of a community of organizations is determined by which “company” participates, but it is more influenced by what “people” are involved, particularly in the early days.

I founded the nonprofit community, called “Platform Advisory Group”, in Korea 10 years ago, and I am very aware of the importance of the initial participants in the community. I, along with its founding members, have grown this community into more than 500 professional groups through regular events and communications. So, in 2012, we gathered only people interested in start-up investment and consultation in the community, and started the Big Bang Angels Angel Club, a profit-making investment community.

Fortunately, the Big Bang Angels made a success story with more than 70 times of the return on investment with Lezhin Comics, the first portfolio company. Since then, we have been able to form an angel fund every year. Since 2014, we have been developing the program as a corporate accelerator and have invested in a total of 80 start-ups. In the beginning of 2018, Big Bang Angels became an institutional investor by attracting investment from an enterprise with AUM of 400M$.

But I have started to think of a new strategy since 2016. We wanted to raise the level of the Korean-based investor Big Bang Angels and portfolio companies to global level. In order to do that, it was necessary to cooperate with partners in other countries with larger markets than Korea. The Across Asia Alliance is a designed as a business model in which not only a small number of accelerators but also a variety of accelerators and investment organizations from different countries could participate.

As with most business models for platforms, the idea for Across Asia Alliance is simple. It is intended to help accelerators and VCs in different countries share information about portfolio companies and start-ups to expand their business in other countries and attract global investment. However, there are practical limitations to this cooperation.

What kind of investment organization will participate in such cooperation? It is very important for the accelerator and the VC to introduce the companies that can be partners or customers to the portfolio start-ups that they have invested in. Even these activities are part of their essential competitiveness. It is therefore not an easy decision to share their core competencies with potential competitors.

But every organization has a good business network in the city where they work, but it is difficult to go beyond that boundary. Moreover, the limitations become more apparent when a portfolio company needs a network to enter other countries. This is the reason why the Across Asia Alliance is necessary, and because no single institution can solve it, mutual cooperation is necessary, and therefore the value of the Across Asia Alliance only occurs to companies that need cross-border investment and business growth.

Therefore, the identity of all members of the Across Asia Alliance can be defined as “cross-border”. In each country, there are so many start-ups and investment companies that are interested in cross-border venture investment and global business expansion, and large companies that want to meet with them. Of course, they are currently looking for online or offline through various conferences or through Crunchbase, but this is clearly inefficient in terms of cost and time.

An open online database is expensive to analyze because of too many choices or to provide only basic data to review investments or analyze companies, and participating in global conferences is not cost effective. To address this, the Across Asia Alliance can encourage mutually trustworthy organizations to recommend each of their portfolio companies to each other to increase efficiency and, ultimately, networking to create meaningful business outcomes.

AAA provides databases and tools to facilitate online IR, Webinar, and Introduction Call on an online platform for effective networking among members. In addition, based on the trust accumulated through online networking, local organizations organize off-line road shows with large companies and investors in the cities where they are located every month to help them develop business and fund raising.

But the beginning of this business model is only possible with “mutually trustworthy members”. And the beginning of the platform business comes down to the question, “Can we bring reliable suppliers into the platform at an early stage?” So now the first question in this article has begun. Who will participate in the Alliance, which has only an idea as of September 2017? Which partner is going to develop this idea together?

I first started discussions with ROA Invention Lab, Coolidge Corner Investment, SparkLabs, and ActnerLab as partner candidates to participate in AAA while having a mutual trust relationship with Bigbang Angels in Korea. Global partners SOSV, Chinaccelerator, MOX, 01Booster, Blinc, and Blue Startup also showed interest in alliance. All of them were interested in a strategy to nurture start-ups proven in other countries in their own countries, with a common “cross-border” keyword.

Looking back, I began to think about the idea in September 2017. In January 2018, I signed MOU with 7 Korean partners and officially started the organization of Across Asia Alliance. In March 2018, a new corporation was established in Singapore to operate AAA. In May 2018, we launched a beta test of the online platform and started to share Startup’s investor proposal and mentor network. As of September 1, 2018, more than 40 organizations have confirmed or are in discussion. Private Roadshow began in Hong Kong in July 2018, and will be held in Jeju in August, in Tokyo in September, in Ho Chi Minh and Bangkok in October, and in Seoul in November.

Now AAA has started its activities as a global start-up support organization. I started to dream of 10B$ with AAA network. It’s still a start, but there’s a lot of trouble coming up here. However, I would like to express my gratitude to the early participating organizations and the partners who have helped me in the idea stage and have grown AAA so far.

In particular, So much thanks to David Kim of the ROA Invention Lab, William Bao Bean, Oscar Ramos of the Chinaccelerator/SOSV, Takeru Kawashima of 01booster, Chenoa Farnsworth of Blue Startups, Vicknesh R Pillay of TNB Ventures, Bay McLaughlin of Blinc and founder of Bigbang Angels, SungSuh Park, Ted Koo, Qha Steve (Kyuha) Kim, Jihoon Jeong, Kwangsun Choi and Kurt Koo of Synergy Partners.

Michael Hwang

Written by

Board member of Across Asia Alliance, Managing Director of Bigbang Angels and PlatformLabs, Pte. Ltd, Angel investor, Platform business model expert

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