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The Venture Codex

Smilegate

5F Solidspace Bld., 220 Pangyoyeok-ro, Bundang-gu, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi-do, 13493, South Korea

Overview

Smilegate Investment, founded in 1999 originally as MVP Capital, is a venture capital and private equity firm that grows remarkably alongside invested companies. Since initial venture capital funding in 2000, the firm has since organized and managed more than 30 venture capital and private equity funds and has invested in more than 200 companies with promising growth potential.

Total investments
4
Lead investments
3
Investments · 12mo
1
Active investors
7

Sector focus

  • Finance
  • Financial Services
  • Venture Capital
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Investment portfolio

  • Square Yards

    Led · Equity · Nov 2025

    Square Yards operates an integrated real estate and mortgage platform with businesses across brokerage, a mortgage marketplace (Urban Money), rental and property management (Azuro), and a home interiors brand (Interior Company). The group has a presence across India, the UAE, Australia, and Canada and says Urban Money facilitated loan disbursals worth Rs 87,831 crore in FY26 through partnerships with more than 150 banks and NBFCs. Financially, the company reported FY26 operating revenue of Rs 2,086 crore, a 48% year-on-year increase, and EBITDA of Rs 176 crore, up 3.7 times year-on-year, with an EBITDA margin that expanded to 8% from 3% in FY25. Square Yards has been scaling its portfolio of businesses across the real estate value chain and recently raised capital at a valuation exceeding $1 billion as it prepares for a planned IPO. Management plans to use fresh funding to accelerate expansion and bolster technology and IPO readiness.

  • Postcard Game Studio

    Led · Seed · Mar 2022

    Postcard Game Studio is an independent developer and publisher of video games for all major platforms, headquartered in Irvine, California. The studio was founded and is led by Ray Almaden, a veteran designer with 17 years of AAA experience across Sony PlayStation, Microsoft Xbox, Ubisoft and Electronic Arts. It is currently developing an unannounced open-world, first-person shooter role-playing game. The studio has opened operations with a team of senior developers in key roles, including a Narrative Director, Studio Technical Director, Lead Designer, Lead Environment Artist, Lead Level Designer, Lead Producer and Lead Quest Designer. Team members have pedigrees at Guerrilla Games, Rockstar, Blizzard, 343 Industries, Crytek, Naughty Dog, Bungie and other AAA studios. The company recently secured external financing to support development and growth.

  • GOODtime

    Participated · Series A · Jun 2021

    GoodTime provides an AI-based interview scheduling and hiring experience solution that automates meeting coordination and measures DE&I in the interview process. The company says its platform can reduce time-to-hire by as much as 50% and save up to $500,000 per year in talent acquisition costs. GoodTime highlights customers including Box, Shopify, Zoom, Dropbox, Instacart, Slack, Pinterest, Stripe, Atlassian and Snapchat. It positions itself as the only HRtech solution that provides a way to measure and manage diversity, equity and inclusion for interview scheduling. The company plans to use new funding to accelerate innovation in hiring/candidate-experience solutions and to expand go-to-market growth across industries. GoodTime said it expects new innovations to launch in the second half of 2021. GoodTime builds an interview scheduling and management platform that uses natural language processing and the calendar as its organizing principle to link candidates with the right interviewers. The product factors in applicant and interviewer data such as gender, ethnicity, university, and prior work history to improve matching and coordination. Recruiting coordinators can manage the end-to-end interview process to reduce friction and speed hiring decisions. Customers like Airbnb and Dropbox have adopted the platform and reported applicants confirming interviews within three hours and time-to-hire reductions of about 40 percent. The company was founded by Ahryun Moon, Jasper Sone, and Peter Lee; Moon is CEO and previously worked as a recruiting coordinator at MuleSoft, Airbnb, and Dropbox. GoodTime is based in San Francisco, has 18 employees, graduated from the Alchemist Accelerator, and has reached profitability on the strength of its existing customers. GoodTime is building a calendar-centric HR tool that uses natural language processing to match job applicants with appropriate interviewers. It integrates with applicant tracking systems and extracts candidate and employee details from spreadsheets and documents to inform pairings based on prior work or university affiliations. The product also focuses on classifying calendar events to separate important meetings from reminders and other low-value items, enabling human-in-the-loop prioritization. GoodTime has early users and paying customers, including Airbnb, and has found product-market fit with Stripe, Thumbtack, and others. The team plans to hire in sales and engineering, with a particular emphasis on machine learning. The company raised a $2M seed to support product development and growth.

  • Starbreeze Entertainment

    Led · Equity · Jan 2016

    Starbreeze creates, publishes and distributes games and franchises, operating studios in Stockholm, Paris and Los Angeles. Under a strategic partnership with Smilegate, Starbreeze will develop a premium co-op PC FPS based on the CROSSFIRE franchise using its Valhalla engine. The company also obtained distribution rights on Smilegate’s platform to launch PAYDAY 2 and OVERKILL’s The Walking Dead in Asian markets and will expand the latter with an Asian version for a simultaneous launch in H2 2017. Smilegate committed a $40M cash investment as part of the partnership, which Starbreeze says secures its plans and opens new markets. The CROSSFIRE franchise brings substantial scale to the deal (reported 500 million users, six million concurrent players and $1,300M in sales in 2014), and Starbreeze expects the collaboration to build long-term player interest and franchise value.

Team

  • Kimoon Nam

    CEO

    LinkedIn
  • Jong Hyuk Park

    Executive Vice President

    LinkedIn
  • Seo Kyung-Woo

    Senior team leader

  • Sangsun Park

    COO/Executive Vice President