BRIAN KANG
Brian Kang has over 20 years of experience as an investment professional, a former CEO of a NASDAQ-listed company and a startup entrepreneur. He also served as a mentor for Sparklabs since the program's inception.
Brian started his career as an engineer on Samsung Electronics' pioneering CDMA team, and then moved into strategy and business development roles.
When Samsung established its first venture investment arm, Samsung Venture Investment Co, in 1999 Brian joined the company as a founding member.
Seven of his investments went public. Afterwards, he joined as a Managing Director of the Korea Venture Fund which later became "Korea Fund of Funds" (aka "Motae Fund").
During the first seven years of the fund, Brian worked with top-tier global investment firms such as Vertex Management, State Street Global Advisors and Yozma.
The Korea Venture Fund not only generated competitive investment outcomes but also served as a stepping stone to Korea's largest venture fund of funds, KFoF. In 2008, Brian served served CEO & Chairman of the Board at Gravity (NASDAQ: GRVY), a Softbank-affiliated MMORPG gaming company most known for "Ragnarok Online". His restructuring efforts led the company to rebound from a large loss to profitability. Brian successfully sustained both revenue and profit growth during his CEO role with Gravity. Later he founded a gaming startup in San Jose, CA and Seoul that initiated and explored the potential of large scale hard-core mobile RPG games in the U.S. and Asian markets. Brian received his MS from NYU and also completed the Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business’s Executive Management Program.