Destination: This Week In Startups Seoul / TWIST Seoul (Gangnam, Seoul)

Get your creative juices flowing – in the business way.

More than just a collection of small business folks, the TWIST Seoul event offered a chance for the world to see some of the best small businesses being formed in the country. Although 31 businesses participated, there was only room for six in the final round – and of course, only one could win. While none of them are household names – yet – it doesn’t strain the memory much to remember a day before Google, Facebook, or Twitter – all tech startups at one point in the past.

The crowd, a nice mix of businesspeople and people following the start-up scene, served as the preliminary judges of the pitches and presentations. To the pitchers, the chance to pitch to some friendly faces and a more relaxed timing mindset likely helped them relax before the real thing.

That ‘real thing’ came in the way of Jason Calacanis and Tyler Crowley, the duo behind the webshow ‘This Week In Startups‘. Go watch the hour-long show if you like. While featuring different themes, one enduring theme is a look into startups around the world. Episodes previously held in Santiago, Chile and Paris gave some cool looks into those respective local startup scenes.

Our local host for the day, Jason Demant. While his role of host didn’t necessarily enable him to talk about his own start-up company, it did get a couple of well-deserved mentions throughout the day.

The six finalists – the audience graded the companies before the real show began.

Josh Kim of adby.me – a site that helps monetize your Twitter or Facebook followings on a pay-per-click basis.

Kim Tae Woo of Moglue – a rich content publishing platform that looks to make e-books look boring.

The man behind Shortenuf – Cha Ok Yoon. The idea was quoted as “crazy” on the show – being able to point a five letter domain names for exactly three minutes – that’s it. The ‘use case’ – who would use it and why – was sort of missing from the pitch, but still a fascinating idea. How about a flash sale – every day at noon, you get a ‘buy now’ link to a well-known product and a crazy-low discount (yes, like Woot – but for three minutes and ONLY three minutes – no time to share)…

After the initial round, it was time for lunch and networking! Any time you bring this many entrepreneurial minds together, good things can happen.

The real show started at noon local time – complete with a Skype-like video call to the web show:

The format of the show enabled all six of the finalist to pitch and present their companies – a bit of the change from the initial program, but a welcome one.

Pitching an elevator speech with his back to the physical audience, Tae Woo Kim of Moglue pitched to the much larger virtual audience.

Even as a passive observer with no stake in any of the companies, the feedback (and networking) aspects are invaluable. As someone with any number of ideas that might eventually turn into businesses, it’s a great day when you can learn from people smarter than you. It’s also a great day when you can support a number of entrepreneurs – albeit by clapping at the right moments and passing on ideas to make their businesses even better.

The three other finalists, in case you were curious (Note that while all pitches were in English, these websites are currently in Korean only):

  • Spoqa – a customer loyalty program that awards you points when you recommend a place to a friend – and they take you up on it.
  • Didi Networks – offering targeted outdoor advertising in public areas. If you see an ad in the Seoul Subway system, there’s a fair chance they had a hand in it.
  • PartyMonster – a GroupOn-like site offering club and party deals, making deals to get more people into the clubs.

Jason and Tyler chose Spoqa as the winner and Adby.me as second, netting the former plane tickets to a start-up conference in San Francisco next year, courtesy of the sponsor (and space provider) Seoul Space. The webshow also awarded a number of excellent prizes to the rest of the finalists – tables and/or tickets to the same conference.

There’s a pretty good chance of another This Week in Startups: Seoul edition – keep your eyes on Seoul Space’s website for details of any future plans!

Ratings (out of 5 taeguks): How do I rate destinations?
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