Jason is a founding member and managing partner at Ascendo Ventures. Throughout his career, Jason has sought out exceptional entrepreneurs in areas such as fintech, IoT, smart factories, consumer technology, autonomous vehicles, and clean technology. Jason was the first and only angel investor in unicorn VivaRepublica (fintech superapp “Toss”), one of the fastest-growing fintech businesses in Korea for which he was also the CFO up until their $75M Series C fundraising round from PayPal and VCs. He was also a board member until 2019. Jason was also an angel investor in Tiger Global-backed unicorn Moloco.

Jason co-founded Bridge Alliance Partners, a Korea-based venture capital firm, and served as managing director. Jason also served as investment team leader (CVC) at Cheil Worldwide, a subsidiary of Samsung and the largest advertising company in Korea. Prior to that, he worked at LS Holdings and implemented strategic planning for its subsidiaries. Jason began his VC career at LB Investment as a founding member of the cross-border investment team focused on China.

Jason earned a B.S. in EE, M.S. in IE from KAIST and Ph.D ABD in the School of Business from Kyunghee University.

Aaron is a founding member and managing partner at Ascendo Ventures where he enjoys working together with entrepreneurs who are solving difficult problems and making big and positive impacts on people’s lives.

Aaron’s current portfolio includes FunNow, N-thing, Dalcomsoft, Wedding Book, BeeCanvas and Medipixel among others.

Aaron was previously an Asia Investment Partner at Formation 8 and became an early investor in successful Korean tech companies such as MyMusicTaste and Lunit (listed in Kosdaq: 328130). Aaron also actively supported the global expansion of portfolio companies including Oculus (acquired by Facebook), Wish (listed in Nasdaq: WISH) and NextVR (acquired by Apple).

Prior to Formation 8, Aaron served as an investment professional at Softbank Ventures focusing on early-stage startups in e-commerce, digital content and other technology sectors. Aaron began his career as a lead engineer of NodeNIC in South Korea, where he invented a patented domain lookup technology and led software development.

Aaron earned a B.S. in Computer Science from Seoul National University in South Korea.

Aaron enjoys riding mid-size waves with a 9’0’’ long-board or a 5’10’’ short-board and loves wine and soccer.

MJ is a partner at Ascendo Ventures. 3 years at POSCO Capital as CEO orchestrating financial services of POSCO and its affiliates. He formed and managed US$ 100 million CVC fund for POSCO Group. He also formed and managed US$ 2 billion SPV focused on mineral resources and energy sector, and initiated strategic partnerships between POSCO E&C and PIF(Public Investment Fund), and served as first CEO of their JV in KSA. Choi founded and operated private equity firm GK Partners for 5 years. GK formed US$ 500 million new energy project fund and provided financial advisory in energy, utilities, semiconductor and infrastructure. Clients included SK Energy and Hynix. He transformed stock brokerage Kyobo Securities into small cap-specialized investment bank as CEO.

He incubated numerous tech startups, of which many successfully partnered with leading Korean and global companies. Choi served as Board Director of Hyundai Industrial Development Corp. for 12 years. As senior partner at PWC and VP of IBM for 5 years, Choi advised on global companies’ innovation initiatives. He also served at World Bank, KRX, and as Chair of KOSDAQ Committee.

He holds DPhil in Economics from Oxford.

Alex is a founding member and partner at Ascendo Ventures. Alex previously served as IoT Program Director at SparkLabs where he managed the investment and acceleration of 16 IoT startups from Korea and around the world in sectors such as AR/VR, industrial AI, biotech, environmental technology, healthcare, agriculture tech, and wearables. In addition, Alex was a core member of the SparkLabs Global Accelerator team, mentoring and advising founders.

Prior to SparkLabs, Alex led the overseas M&A team at HanmiGlobal, a global construction management company based in Korea. Alex successfully led and closed their first cross-border acquisition in North America for their technology and design initiatives. Alex previously was a special situations research analyst at D.B. Zwirn & Co., a New York-based $5.5 billion multi-strategy hedge fund, where he covered a range of sectors in both public and private alternative investment strategies.

Alex is originally from the American Midwest but spent his formative years in Kobe, Japan, after which he graduated from Duke University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science (International Relations).

Alex loves his family, his dogs, music (hip hop and jazz), futbol, and (Duke!) basketball.

Jerry is one of investment partners at Ascendo Ventures. Throughout his career, Jerry has proven his ability to make serial successes in TicTok and Toss, Viva Republica as a C-level and co-founder. Jerry’s career highlight comes from the contribution to the Toss’s growth. He served as a COO at Viva Republica since its starting to nurture the growth of a current fintech giant. He contributed the growth through hiring potential talents and connecting influential persons to help the company’s business. Through his good reputation across the startup communities in Korea coming from the successful exit experience of TicToc Messenger as a COO, he successfully hired good persons and corresponded to the regulation request from the authorities concerned regarding the internet bank businesses. Without him, Toss could not get the “first mover” internet bank license.

Jerry is a good and longtime friend with Jason. And he will help the portfolio companies to get through the hardships during their growth stage.
He graduated KAIST with a Bachelor’s Degree in Construction Engineering.

Jerry loves his family, startups and Psy.

… Jason named his son as Jooyoung resembling Jerry’s name.

Zian is the fund administration team leader at Ascendo Ventures. Zian was previously a founding member of Mira Partners, a venture capital management company, and provided services that systematize the various tasks and requirements customary to fund management and operations in the Korean venture capital ecosystem. In particular, she has deep expertise in the venture capital and corporate tax fields. She also served as Gallup Clifton Strength Coaching “coach” and advisor, consulting to numerous startups on building strength-based organizational cultures.

Zian likes delicious food, jujitsu, and caring for her houseplant collection.