Your Next Cute Robot May be Korean

Pibo and Cubroid are friends. In a country where three giant conglomerates (LG, Samsung, and Hyundai) suck up most of the engineering talent, these two pint-sized little robots could be the future of Korean hardware innovation.

- Sascha Segan

Pibo is a 3D-printed, Raspberry Pi-based “family companion” that can use the internet to answer questions about your world. Cubroid is a bunch of robotic blocks that help kids learn how to program using physical objects. The two are part of a small club of companies in Korea’s new startup scene, which is dominated by software and services.

In a presentation, consultant Nathan Millard of G3 Partners says there’s been a massive upswing in the number of Korean startups in the past five years, with more than 20 accelerators, a vibrant investment scene, and major government support. When I visited the startups behind Pibo and Cubroid, I found a new Digital Media City (DMC) by the old World Cup stadium featuring towers stuffed with dozens of small startup companies.

The biggest challenge, it seems, is global breakout. Of the 46 startups that DMC’s Yu Bae Park told me he helps manage, only about 10 percent are currently looking at markets outside Korea. Millard points out that “of Korea’s recent standout successes ... none have found success beyond Korea.”

Korean tech firms other than the big three have tended to develop primarily for their own market—Korea has its own analogues of Google (Naver), Facebook/ WhatsApp (Kakao), and various other services—and they don’t tend to think or speak globally. That’s changing, too, though. The Pibo and Cubroid guys, while unpolished and thoroughly engineer-driven, have their eyes set on the global market, and even on the U.S.

One thing about being in a small scene is that everyone knows each other. Cubroid’s Mark Shin showed me a Javascript book written by Pibo’s Jonggun Park, and said he wanted to use Pibo’s big-data AI system in the future. That’s the kind of cross-pollination a startup scene could use to succeed.

BIG DATA, SMALL ROBOT