Honestbee, a Singapore-based grocery delivery startup, is on track to attract additional investment after striking a stock-conversion deal with investors who chipped in $170 million in convertible notes, said Brian Koo, one of Honestbee’s earliest investors, declaring “its crisis is almost cleared up.”

Brian Koo a.k.a. Koo Bon-woong, 41, a founding member of U.S. venture capital firm Formation Group, has earned fame for his successful early investments in Silicon Valley startups, including virtual reality company Oculus VR which was acquired by Facebook for $2 billion.

Honestbee was too aggressive in its expansion, Koo admitted. The food and laundry service founded in 2015 added an offline supermarket chain habitat with an advanced robot and payment system like Amazon Go in 2018, and then launched a delivery app service in eight Asian countries. The startup faced a cash crunch early this year. As an interim CEO, Koo overhauled the management team and introduced a host of changes to the organization and led a debt-rescheduling agreement. Three months later, the company was able to ease cashing out by nearly 80 percent and its business model was reshaped around habitat whose revenue had grown by 45 percent each month.

Koo’s job was not over yet. Last month he set up habitat USA soon after a new chief executive was appointed. He envisions habitat USA as a platform for promising Asian startups to be channeled to global markets.

“In fact, this is my passion project. Whenever I wander around Korea, I discover new cosmetics, sheet face masks or other fancy items which are not yet in New York or Los Angeles.” Korea has many things to become global hits if they are refined to adapt to a new environment, he asserted.

That’s one reason why he invested in Memebox, a formidable brand as an online store and review site to vend varieties of beauty products. For him, offline habitat stores could serve as a platform for innovative Asian firms like Memebox to explore business opportunities overseas.

In that sense, "the hardship at Honestbee served as a wake-up call for me to solidify my vision,” he said. “There is a great opportunity in ‘East to West.’ I’ll bet my whole life for it.”

Koo went on to say he will bring Korean entrepreneurs with brilliant ideas to the United States and help them thrive in the foreign market. “I am blessed with family fortune,” he said, adding that as a third generation of Korean chaebol (family-controlled conglomerates), his duty is to share such abundant resources that have allowed him to come to the United States and build a good network of investors in Silicon Valley. Now it is his “homework” to use his resources to open the way to young Korean entrepreneurs, he emphasized.

Koo is the grandson of LS Cable & System honorary chairman Koo Tae-hwoi and the eldest son of LS Nikko-Copper chairman Koo Cha-hong.

Koo, who completed high school and military service in Korea, went to the U.S. in 2002 and received an undergraduate degree in economics from Stanford University and an MBA degree from Stanford Graduate School of Business. His venture capital firm invested in over 50 different start-ups.

By Shin Hyun-kyu and Minu Kim

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