It was a privilege to serve on the finalist selection jury of this year’s K-Startup Grand Challenge with my friends Sam Ameen from Hong Kong’s Betatron Accelerator and Greg Appelhof from Hardware Massive. Thank you again for the kindness and hospitality of the Korean Ministry of SMEs and Startups, National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA), and the YSKMedia team.
Over three days we listened to and grilled the 80+ finalists in order to choose a top ten that would continue on with the Korean startup business development program.

Hailing from all over the world, the startups and SMEs spent 3-6 months immersed in the Korean market with curated introductions and business development with Korea’s largest corporations. We saw some inspiring projects and I was surprised by the level of business development traction that many of the companies achieved in so little time.
I also was able to meet a bit of the local blockchain/crypto ecosystem and present a condensed version of my Tokenized Securities and the Future of Investment keynote.
🏆 I love serving on startup juries, and consider it a privilege and a tremendous responsibility. Want to invite me to participate in your event? Feel free to reach out.
Below is a list of the K-Startup Grand Challenge finalists we had the pleasure of meeting.


Director at The CryptoAssets Institute, evangelizing the blockchain economy across Europe and Southeast Asia, advising government administrations, corporations, and funds on tokenization. Founder of Borderless Ventures focused on FrenchTech, CEE, and ASEAN startups. Former Managing Partner, Nest Venture Capital.
Ethan is a highly sought-after keynote speaker and advisor on the Blockchain Economy and CryptoAssets, particularly Tokenized Securities. He’s also passionate about entrepreneurship, European and Southeast Asian innovation ecosystems and startup scale, as well as corporate-startup innovation. He is a frequent media interviewee and available for TV, radio/podcast, print, and video.
Invite Ethan to speak at your conference or to inspire your employees and executives at your next corporate event.