A KAIST undergraduate by the name Inmo Chung has received an investment of 1.5 billion Korean won for his Startup iamcompany, from the venture capitalist Timothy C. Draper, a well-known name in the industry. Chung is a 4th year Industrial Design major at KAIST but is on a temporary leave of absence to run his company. Having gained substantial financial support, iamcompany is expected to accelerate its growth, as the country's premier educational service.

▲ The newsletter application developers earned both reputation and investment

Iamcompany is most renowned for iamschool, a newsletter application for the classroom. It provides a convenient means of relaying school newsletters, family letters and other notifications from schools to parents for them to read on their smartphones. In the space of 2 years, iamschool has grown to have a user-base of 75,000 parents and is currently serving 8000 schools from all around the country. The company has also grown from its original 4 members to 20 employees and has moved from the offices of the KAIST Technology Business Incubation Center to Pangyo Techno Valley, South Korea's own Silicon Valley.

Timothy C. Draper is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist that is currently juggling 5 trillion Korean won worth of investment portfolios. In the past, he excavated the likes of Hotmail, Skype, and Baidu when they were mere startups and played a big part in moulding them into the global venture giants they are today. Draper's confidence in Chung's company shows that it has the potential to go global; in fact, iamschool was selected for the "K-App Global Hub Program" hosted in Singapore by the Small Business Administration last October, once again demonstrating that it was ready even back then to move into the world market. Chung revealed, "I am proud that the world's leading investor has realized iamschool's value and this has given me the confidence to enter the global market."

This September, iamcompany is set to release a new version of iamschool, with big updates on the current model.

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