Lee Seung-yoon, CEO of a startup with a corporate value of 3 trillion won, two years after selling a 600 billion won web novel platform
“From IP creation to protection to profit sharing… We will create new standards in the AI era”
Silicon Valley's top VC also invested three times in a row… "Focusing on the future potential of IP and Web3"
“From the web novel platform to web 3, I always started out hearing that it was ‘early.’”
Pip Labs CEO Seungyoon Lee, the fastest growing company in the global web3 industry, revealed his entrepreneurial journey at the UKF 2025 Startup Summit held in Silicon Valley, USA on the 10th. Having successfully attracted investment worth $2.2 billion (approximately 3 trillion won) in corporate value in September of last year, his new challenge began at the intersection of IP and blockchain.
CEO Lee Seung-yoon explained the background of his entry into the Web3 market, saying, “I wanted to solve bigger problems during my prime time in my early 30s,” following the success of Radish, a web novel platform that was sold to Kakao Entertainment for approximately 600 billion won.
“Mobile started in 2008, but I always regretted not jumping in until 2016. That’s why I wanted to get in at the very beginning of a new trend this time.”
Pip Labs is building a platform that allows IP to be combined like 'Lego blocks' to create new creations. It gives unique identifiers to all forms of IP, including characters, images, and voices. And it plans to automate licensing and revenue sharing through this.
We are particularly focusing on IP protection in the AI era.
“As AI learns existing content, it is necessary to compensate the original creators, but it is not realistic to sign individual contracts with ChatGPT or Gemini. This is when a software-driven IP system is needed.”
This vision caught the eye of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), the top VC in Silicon Valley. A16z led three rounds of investment in a single company, the first since Coinbase. Even when the cryptocurrency market crashed in 2022, it kept its promise.
Currently, Pip Labs is headquartered in Palo Alto, USA, and has hired 70% of its employees locally. It is preparing to launch about 100 decentralized applications (DApps) starting in February. “We must have a killer app in various fields such as fashion, games, and music within 6 to 9 months.”
He emphasized three things as the key to startup success.
“The first 10 people should be better than me. Don’t leave everything to experts, but the founder should solve the core problems himself. And you should prepare for it by thinking that it will take 10 years to succeed.”
He also did not spare advice for junior entrepreneurs. “When I first came to Silicon Valley in 2014, I started in a bad environment. However, I sought advice from senior entrepreneurs who had walked a similar path 3-4 years before me, and that helped me the most. It is much better to be introduced to VCs through founders than through investors.”
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