Formation 8 cofounder Koo Bon-woong

Korean chaebol -- family-controlled conglomerates -- are rushing to capitalize on K-pop which is steadily gaining global popularity.
One example is LS Group.

Koo Bon-woong, the grandson of late LG Cable & System honorary chairman Koo Tae-hoe and eldest son of LS-Nikko Copper chairman Koo Ja-hong, recently invested in a new K-pop related Korean venture firm called My Music Taste.

The younger Koo is already well-known as the cofounder of investment firm Formation 8, which previously made a high-profile investment in Oculus VR that eventually gained high returns.

On Jan. 8, Formation 8 and seven other venture capital firms, including Softbank Ventures, Samsung Ventures Investment, and Chinese DT Capital, invested $10 million in crowdsourcing platform My Music Taste, or MMT.

My Music Taste, a platform that analyzes K-pop demand

MMT is a platform that analyzes the demand for K-pop concerts abroad and eventually plans them. Thus, different from usual concerts, fans do not crowd after a singer has decided to hold a concert but instead invites the celebrity to their town.

With currently over 500,000 subscribers from around the world, MMT successfully held over 80 concerts in 30 cities. Popular boy-band INFINITE and Block B were able to hold concerts in Europe through this crowdsourcing platform service.

Because the K-pop industry is gaining popularity around the world and with no other service providing such information, Koo decided on the investment seeing the potential for growth.

MMT is a burgeoning international platform, with 95 percent of its users coming from abroad.

Its parent company JJS Media was cofounded by Lee Jae-seok in 2011.

After graduating from KAIST and working as a MapleStory game developer at Korea’s largest game developer Nexon, Lee founded JJS Media realizing the lack of platforms that connect the audience and production agencies. He has since started to supply audience demand for concerts through JJS Media.

Before investing in MMT, Formation 8 invested in other companies.

Cofounding Formation 8 in Silicon Valley in 2012, Koo has since ventured into the private equity industry and invested in around 80 start-ups -- including $15 million in Korean mobile service company Yellow Mobile in 2014.

Its most well-known investment was $12.5 million in virtual reality technology company Oculus VR, that was later acquired by Facebook in March 2014, which increased the investment profits tenfold to a jaw-dropping $130 million.

It remains to be seen whether this investment in the K-pop industry will outdo or even reach the same amount of success as seen in the virtual reality sector.

By The Korea Herald Superrich Team (seoyounglee@heraldcorp.com)

Hong Seung-wan
Cheon Ye-seon
Seo Jee-yeon
Yoon Hyun-jong
Min Sang-seek
Lee Seo-young