Taling (CEO: Yoonhwan Kim) won April D.DAY hosted by D.CAMP (Banks Foundation for Young Entrepreneurs) on April 27th. Taling is a startup that provides online talent sharing service among individuals.

There were more than 150 people including future entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs and investors attended for April D.DAY. Eungang Song (CEO of Capstone Partners), Hyuktae Kwon (CEO ofCoolidge Corner Investment), Taekkyung Lee (CEO of MashUp Angels), Eugene Kim (CEO ofSparklabs) and Hojoon Sohn (Director of Stonebridge Capital) participated as judges and mentors.

Taling runs a platform where everyone can share their hobbies and talents. An individual with a certain talent can become a tutor and teach a class for tutees who are interested. Subjects ranges from beauty, health, foreign language, computer programming, sports, music and art. Anyone can become a tutor and a tutee. The name Taling means making the best out of spare time.

CEO Kim said it was very meaningful to win D.DAY after having gone through top Korean venture capitalist judges’ evaluation. Since its launch in February 2016, the company spent a year learning about its customers. Moving forward, it will focus on getting acknowledged by the public.

Besides Taling, MADMADE (and their funeral service for pets, Po-Ong), Cool Jamm Company (and their musical composition service using human voice, Hum On), Plus Beta (and their professional product photography camera app, Store Camera), and UT Infra (nutrition management service for cancer patients, KINI CARE). Among them, MADMADE received audience award.

Eungang Song, CEO of Capstone Partners commented  that Korean startup ecosystem is evolving and becoming more sophisticated. He advised to startups that they should focus on defining their target audience and delivering customer value. Hyuktae Kwon, CEO of Coolidge Corner Investment, also suggested strategic profit maximization through diversification instead of focusing on a single profit model

Those who won D.DAY or received good assessment can join D. ANGEL program where they move into coworking spaces and receive up to 1 million KRW investment . D.ANGEL program also provides free mentoring, advertisement and networking opportunities.

D.DAY is a top monthly demo day event in Korea that takes place on the last Thursday of each month. Since June 2013, D.DAY has been hosted by D.CAMP for more than 40 times already, and has introduced  more than 200 startups to the world. The winners include Viva Republica (mobile P2P money transfer service), 8PERCENT (mobile P2P loan service), Innovation Medley Laboratory (mobile service for wearable device), WELT (fashionable healthcare wearable device),DoDotDo (B2B hotel management software for smartwatch), n.thing (IoT solution for urban agriculture), hey beauty (beauty salon reservation service) and weekly shirts (weekly shirt subscription service).

source : techforkorea