If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. – Steve Jobs.
Words of wisdom. After nine months as the CEO of Ginger Software, the time has come for me to move on. As I look back I feel pretty good about we’ve accomplished in this short period. We’ve raised $5MM from top investor Horizons Ventures (Li ka-Shing) and Harbor Pacific Capital. We’ve put Ginger on the international map, got started in Japan and launched Ginger for Chrome , Safari and Firefox. Not bad. But it’s time to move on.
I would like to take the opportunity to thank Horizons Ventures for their understanding and support. You guys are the best. I also would like to wish the Ginger team the best of success. Remember the only platform that will really matter is mobile.
Time to figure out what’s next.
I’m very excited to announce that Horizons Ventures, the venture capital fund fully owned by Mr. Li Ka-shing , together with Harbor Pacific Capital has invested $5 million dollars in Ginger! Ever since I first started to work with Horizon Ventures while still at Facebook back in 2007, I knew that I wanted to work together with them again. Horizon’s unique passion for education and artificial intelligence coupled with a unique global network (especially in Asia) and a very strong “can do” approach, was my main reason for choosing them as an investor.
I am also very excited that Frank Meehan will be joining Ginger’s board. Frank and I worked together on the partnership between Facebook and INQ Mobile which resulted in the award-winning INQ1 at the Mobile World Congress in February 2009. Beside being a VC with Horizons Ventures, Frank is also active as the CEO & founder of the exciting London-based Kuato Studios leveraging AI and gaming technology to teach children computer programming.
I am also very happy that Harbor Pacific Capital, a small venture capital firm with close connections to Li Ka-shing has invested in Ginger as well. Harbor Pacific Capital has invested in companies great companies like Evernote and Palantir just to mention a few and are very active in Asia.
With these great new partners on board and with some more fuel in the tank, it’s time to get things done!
Techcrunch: Money Talks: Ginger Software Raises another $5.4M Led by Horizons and Harbor Pacific for Speech Apps.
Bloomberg: Li Ka-shing Acquires stake in Language Company Ginger
I feel very honored and priviliged to join SparkLabs as a mentor together with (giant) luminaries like Vint Cerf (the father of Internet), Mark Cuban (I’m not worthy!) and a very impressive list of other well accomplished mentors. SparkLabs provides a 3-month long program for seed to early-stage entrepreneurs who have a vision beyond Korea’s borders. SparkLabs focus is on entrepreneurs seeking to change the Internet, online gaming, mobile, ecommerce and digital media sectors and invest $25,000 in each company, provide free office space, give unparalleled mentorship, incredible perks and access to a global network of companies, programs and people. SparkLabs was founded by my friend Bernard Moon together with Hanjoo Lee, co-founder of Hostway, and Jimmy Kim , founder of Innotive. I’m very excited to see what entrepreurs and companies SparkLabs will breed.
Forbes Israel just chose Ginger as one of the 10 most successful and promising tech companies in Israel that have the biggest chance of becoming a real established and profitable company. Very excited for Ginger and all the cool things we are cooking. Stay tuned for future announcements…
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