Lee Seung-yoon (entrepreneur)

This article is about the South Korean entrepreneur. For the South Korean singer-songwriter, see Lee Seung-yoon.
In this Korean name, the family name is Lee.
Lee Seung-yoon
이승윤
Born13 November 1990
Seoul, South Korea
Other namesSY Lee
EducationUniversity of Oxford (BA)
OccupationBusiness executive
Years active2016–present
TitleChief executive officer of Story Protocol (2022–present)

Lee Seung-yoon (Korean: 이승윤, born 13 November 1990[1]) is a South Korean entrepreneur. He is a co-founder and the CEO of Story Protocol, a blockchain-based repository system for intellectual property, and co-founder of Radish, a serial fiction app which sold to Kakao for US$440 million.[2]

Early life

Lee was born in Seoul to Hong Kun Lee, an orthopedist, and Sung Hye Jung, a professor of fashion design and textiles at Inha University. Lee's grandfathers were both entrepreneurs.[3]

Education

In 2008, Lee travelled to the United States to spend the summer interning for Congressman Bobby Scott of Virginia’s 3rd district. The following year, he interned at the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea.[3]

From 2010 until 2014, Lee studied philosophy, politics and economics at Hertford College, Oxford. He served as president of the Oxford Union, an independent debating society, in 2012–13,[4][5][6] and launched its YouTube channel.[7]

Career

In 2013, he worked as an intern at McKinsey. After graduating from the University of Oxford in 2014, Lee worked as a freelance interviewer for the Korean daily JoongAng Ilbo.[8] He was also a contributing editor at Nicolas Berggruen's WorldPost.[7] Convinced the existing advertising-based journalism model was unsustainable, he conceived Byline.com, a crowdfunding platform aimed at financing journalists.[9] He registered the company in the United Kingdom with Daniel Tudor in October 2014,[1] and secured $850,000 in seed funding from Kakao Corporation's founder Lee Jae-woong, Nicolas Berggruen, Eric X. Li and investor Ian Osborne.[10][11] He launched the website with Tudor in April 2015 before handing it over to company adviser Peter Jukes and the Saatchi & Saatchi executive Stephen Colegrave in 2016.[12][13]

Lee founded Radish Fiction in February 2016, reusing some of Byline's technology and staff.[14][15]

Radish initially relied on user-generated content but later focused on original and in-house stories. It specializes in genres suited to episodic publishing, and monetizes by charging premium fees for immediate access to new chapters.[3]

By January 2017, Radish had raised around $3 million in seed funding;[16] in August 2020, it completed a Series A funding round of $63.2 million led by SoftBank Ventures Asia.[15] Less than a year later, South Korean tech and entertainment conglomerate Kakao acquired Radish for $440 million.[17]

Lee then worked briefly for Kakao Entertainment as its global strategy officer.[18]

In 2022, Lee founded Story Protocol.[19] The company was valued in 2024 at $2.25 billion after Andreessen Horowitz invested $80 million in a Series B funding round.[20]

In 2023, he was a Trilateral Commission's David Rockefeller Fellow.[21]

Recognition

In 2017, Lee was listed on the Forbes 30 Under 30.[22]

References

  1. ^ a b "Byline Media Limited (Company number 09277212): Filing history: Incorporation". Companies House. October 23, 2014. Retrieved August 20, 2025.
  2. ^ Lunden, Ingrid (August 21, 2024). "Story raises $80M at $2.25B valuation to build a blockchain for the business of content IP in the age of AI". TechCrunch. Retrieved March 25, 2025.
  3. ^ a b c Martin, Mitchell (September 28, 2023). "Can Blockchain Turbocharge Fan Fiction And Protect Authors From AI's Threat?". Forbes. Retrieved March 25, 2025.
  4. ^ Kim, Sarah (March 10, 2012). "First Korean elected to lead Oxford debate team". Korea JoongAng Daily. Archived from the original on January 22, 2021.
  5. ^ Laporte, Nicole (March 2, 2017). "Get To Know Radish, The Serialized Fiction App Bringing Novels To Smartphones". Fast Company. Retrieved March 25, 2025.
  6. ^ "S. Korean Student to Head Oxford Union". KBS World. March 6, 2012. Archived from the original on August 20, 2025.
  7. ^ a b "Our Team". Byline.com. Archived from the original on July 17, 2015.
  8. ^ Su-jin, Chun (May 12, 2021). "Radish founder Lee Seung-yoon plays first and earns later". JoongAng Daily. Retrieved March 25, 2025.
  9. ^ Kim, Sohee (August 4, 2020). "SoftBank Backs 29-Year-Old's Goal of Netflix for Online Fiction". Bloomberg. Retrieved March 25, 2024.
  10. ^ Lomas, Natasha (July 21, 2015). "Byline Wants To Crowdfund Media Pluralism". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on July 22, 2015.
  11. ^ "About us". Byline.com. Archived from the original on July 10, 2017.
  12. ^ Burrell, Ian (May 9, 2019). "Byline pivots to print, promising to tell readers 'what the papers don't say'". The Drum. Archived from the original on July 26, 2024. Retrieved February 7, 2021.
  13. ^ Ciobanu, Mădălina (July 9, 2015). "Byline sees a new wave in crowdfunded journalism". Journalism.co.uk. Archived from the original on July 30, 2015. Retrieved June 21, 2021.
  14. ^ Ko, Eun-Yi (August 22, 2024). "SY Lee: A Korean startup creator who fetched $80 mn for Story Protocol". The Korea Economic Daily. Retrieved March 25, 2025.
  15. ^ a b Bosilkovski, Igor (August 11, 2020). "Meet The Korean Entrepreneur Who Just Raised $63 Million For The 'Netflix For Serialized Fiction Stories'". Forbes. Retrieved March 25, 2025.
  16. ^ Spangler, Todd (January 31, 2017). "Fiction-App Startup Radish Raises $3 Million from UTA, Bertelsmann, Amy Tan and Others". Variety. Retrieved March 25, 2025.
  17. ^ Sung-mo, Kim; Seong-ho, Cho (September 9, 2024). "Silicon Valley's Midas Touch Meets a 34-Year-Old Entrepreneur With a Track Record of Hitting Startup Jackpots". The Chosun Daily. Retrieved March 25, 2025.
  18. ^ Ko, Eun-Yi (August 22, 2024). "SY Lee: A Korean startup creator who fetched $80 mn for Story Protocol". The Korea Economic Daily. Archived from the original on August 23, 2024.
  19. ^ Morgan, Rick (December 13, 2024). "Billion-dollar startup with Bay Area ties calls Bellevue home". Puget Sound Business Journal. Retrieved March 25, 2025.
  20. ^ Irwin, Veronica (August 21, 2024). "In Rare Three-Peat, Andreessen Leads $80 Million AI-Focused Funding Round For Story Protocol". Forbes. Retrieved March 25, 2025.
  21. ^ "Seung-yoon Lee". Berggruen Institute. Archived from the original on March 29, 2023. Retrieved August 20, 2025.
  22. ^ "Seung-yoon Lee". Forbes. Retrieved March 25, 2025.
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