• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.1-10
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• 2023

Strong Critics of' Moral Hazard, due to plummeting severely their stock price down and damage falling on plain investor, has been skyrocketed against massively and simultaneously exercising stock option right of C-Level members in Stock market listed startups right after IPO regardless of proper and legal process followed. Korean Financial Supervisory Board initiate new act of extending to apply'Lock-up Rule'even to stock option of core interest group after IPO. However, it will cause startups and venture more difficulties to recruit top level of talented staffs. This paper aims to propose RSU(Restricted Stock Unit) as alternative to breakthrough the current deadlock issue with respect to stock option controversy many startups facing. This paper to meet goal, first, including Korean introducing status of RSU, it clarify the concept of RSU by comparing exploration with Restricted Stock and define characteristic of RSU by comparing Stock Option. Second, it bring more effective ways of startups introducing RSU in Korea overcoming its limitations and challenges. Third, it carry out FGI to legal expert deeply involved of introducing RSU in Korea at policy domain. FGI focus on defining core challenging factors and their level of huddles of introducing RSU in Korea with proposing breakthrough policies to landing RSU softly in Korea. Fourth, it suggest valid policies of introducing and stabilizing RSU in Korea completely. This paper expect some contributions Korean startups and venture on finding market friendly right breakthrough out of stock option dilemma currently in.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.338-352
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• 2019

This study was empirically intended to determine obstacle factors of the global start-up promotion for the international inroad of global start-up companies. The statistical analysis of reliability and validity was conducted through the AMOS structural equation model after surveying 300 companies over 5 years old into start-up in metropolitan cities across the country. The findings are as follows. The global start-up growth had a very close relationship with capital, product development period, quality and human resources. And capital as a start-up obstacle factor was insignificant, but development period, quality and human resources had a close relationship with industrial competitiveness. Even in the mediating effect of start-up obstacle factors on industrial competitiveness, capital was rejected, while quality, development period and human resources were adopted, having a positive mediating effect. These results demonstrate that capital is not a big obstacle to the management because of the continuous support of the government due to the nature of start-up companies, but growth is in a remote future as long as there is no independent product competitiveness to maintain the quality of products at a certain level and support of professional workforce to develop and commercialize them.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.1-13
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• 2019

As a way to find new and innovative technologies, many companies have invested in and acquired skilled startups. Because startups are usually small in size and have a small history of past business experience, there are many risks involved in acquiring them as they have limited technical skills and business feasibility verification methods. Thus, venture capital plays an important role in discovering and investing competitive startups. While Independent Venture Capital generally values financial returns, Corporate Venture Capital, which plays investment roles in the firm, values business synergies with the parent company from a strategic perspective. In an industry sector where development of technology is rapid and whether new technology is held determines a company's competitiveness, existing companies incorporate startups with innovative technologies into their investment portfolios, collaborate together, and take over for comprehensive cooperation. In addition, new investments and acquisitions are carried out through the management of portfolio companies to obtain and utilize industry information. In this paper, major U.S. companies listed in the U.S. verified their investment activities through corporate venture capital and their impact on parent companies and startups through regression, while the parent company's acquisition performance was analyzed through an event study based on a stock price analysis. The criteria for startup were defined as companies with less than 12 years of experience, and the analysis showed that the parent companies with corporate venture capital with a larger number of investments actively take over startups. In addition, increasing corporate venture capital's financial investment activities shows a negative impact on the parent companies' acquisition activities, and the acquisition performance increased when the parent companies took over startups in its portfolio.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.199-209
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• 2019

The importance of business strategy for successful social media engagement has quickly increased as more businesses engage in social media. The importance is even greater for startup companies because startup companies are genuinely new to business, and they need to increase their presence in the market, and quickly access future customers. The objective of this paper lies in exploring key indicators of social media engagements by selected startup companies. The key indicators include two aspects of social media usages by the companies: i) overall social media activities, and ii) properties of network structure of the information flow platform provided by social media service. To better assess and evaluate the key indicators of social media usages by startup companies, the indicators will be compared with those of selected large established companies. Twitter is selected as a social media service for the analysis of this paper, and using Twitter REST API, data regarding the key indicators of overall Twitter activities and the Twitter follower-network of each company in the sample are collected. Then, the data are analyzed using social network analysis and hierarchical clustering analysis to examine the characteristics of the follower-network structures and to compare the characteristics between startup companies and established companies. The results show that most indicators are significantly different across startup companies and established companies. One key interesting finding is that the startup companies have proportionally more influencers in their follower-networks than the established companies have. Another interesting finding is that the follower-networks of startup companies in the sample have higher modularity and higher transitivity, suggesting that the startup companies tend to have a proportionally larger number of communities of users in their follower-networks, and the users in the networks are more tightly connected and cohesive internally. The key business implication for the future social media engagement efforts by startup companies in general is that startup companies may need to focus on getting more attention from influencers and promoting more cohesive communities in their follower-networks to appreciate the potential benefits of social media in the early stage of business of startup companies.

• Journal of Practical Engineering Education
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.433-447
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• 2024

This study analyzes the impact of core competencies of technology innovation startups-namely technological development capability, organizational management capability, and digital transformation capability-on financial performance through the mediation of innovativeness. Previous research has focused on the non-financial performance of startups, with a lack of studies examining financial performance, which is a crucial indicator of actual business success. Therefore, an online survey was conducted targeting domestic technology innovation startups, and data from 213 responses were used for the final analysis. The results of the structural equation modeling indicated that technological development capability, organizational management capability, and digital transformation capability positively influence innovativeness. Additionally, higher levels of innovativeness were associated with improved financial performance, and innovativeness was found to play a significant mediating role between core competencies and financial performance. These findings suggest which competencies technology innovation startups should focus on to achieve financial goals.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.233-242
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• 2016

Startup must be agile and be able to handle extreme changes, survive unpredicted threats, and capitalize on emerging business opportunities. Agile teams continually sense changes for competitive action and marshal the necessary knowledge. While team members share their knowledge, there must be emerging various type of conflicts in teams. This study examines the relationship among the conflict, knowledge sharing and agility in startup context. At the same time, we tested the roles of shard vision both moderating variable between conflict and knowledge sharing, and antecedent for knowledge sharing. Different two types of conflict, task conflict and relationship conflict, knowledge sharing, agility, and different impact of shared vision are identified from literatures and tested. 182 data points were collected from under 5-year old startup's representatives to test these hypotheses. PLS data analysis indicated that the task conflict and shard vision positively effect on knowledge sharing, and then knowledge sharing has statistically significant effect on agility. And the impact of conlict has been weakened by shared vision's moderating effect. Based on the results, we proposed practically several team management skills for startup managers, leaders and stakeholder, and explained theoretical contributions.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.169-183
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• 2019

Should a startup file for a patent subject to imitation in its quest to attract venture capital(VC) investors? Considering the US pharmaceutical biotechnology industry context, this paper attempts to answer this question by investigating the relations between the number of applied patents of startups, patent imitability, and the total amount of money the startups received as their first VC funding round. Data of 157 US-based pharmaceutical biotechnology startups founded in between 1995 and 2005 are analyzed. Empirical results from this study show that the number of applied patents is positively related to the total amount of money received at the time of the first funding round, and patent imitability is negatively related to the total amount of money received as first VC funding round. Nonetheless, the interaction term between the number of applied patents of startups and patent imitability came out as positive, raising interesting questions and implications for innovation-oriented startup entrepreneurs. The current study's empirical findings suggest that, in the pharmaceutical biotechnology sector, VC investors pay attention to the quantity and quality of the patents possessed by startups when they decide the level of funding. In particular, imitability of applied patents may not be a one-sided concept related to negative features such as the weak protectability of an invention. Rather, patent imitability may be a multi-facet element which also contains positive attractiveness of the startup's invention. Furthermore, it seems that the positive side of imitability can be augmented by the number of applied patents.

• Korean small business review
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.173-209
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• 2021

Start-up accelerators are a new type of investor that provide mentoring, education and seed capital to start-ups for a fixed duration and receive a certain stake in them in return. They help start-ups achieve successful commercialization. With increase in performance visibility, the number of private and public sector accelerators rose across domestic and international markets. Private sector accelerators are established and operated by private entities while public sector accelerators are established and operated by the government. Both play complementary roles that are becoming increasingly important to start-ups. Therefore, this study aims to examine the differences in major operational goals and investment determinants between private and public sectors and to understand their implications. The results show that the private sector prioritizes profit generation through the investment, while the public sector aims to contribute to the development of high-growth start-ups, and create region-specific and technology-specific start-up ecosystems. Additionally, both groups consider customer needs the most important determinant. Public groups are more conservative in investments and tend to place importance on objective indicators such as patents, partners, mentors, and co-founders. Conversely, private groups value the capabilities of founders and their ease of collaboration with accelerators. These findings can help start-ups get support from public or private accelerators more easily. It will also help public and private accelerators refine the criteria for selecting start-ups.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.39-50
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• 2022

Based on the signaling theory, this study examined whether startups are more likely to attract venture investment when receiving government R&D subsidies. First, we reviewed previous studies of the investment decision-making process of venture capitalists and understood the conditions that influence investment decisions. Based on previous studies on the signal effect of government subsidies, particularly government R&D grants, on inducing private fund investment, this study revealed a mechanism to induce venture investment by startups. In addition, in order to verify whether government R&D subsidies have the effect of inducing venture investment, an empirical analysis was conducted based on data from startups under seven years and certified as a venture companies in 2021. This paper used PSM(Propensity Score Matching) method and DID(Difference In Difference) analysis for an empirical study to analyze the average treatment effect on the treated group(beneficiary startups of government R&D grants). As a result of empirical analysis, companies that receive more government R&D subsidies after starting a business are more likely to attract venture investment. From two to three years after conducting the first government R&D project, startups that received government R&D grants attracted more venture investment than those that did not. The results of this paper demonstrate that government R&D projects can also affect the venture investment ecosystem, giving policy implications to government R&D projects targeting startups. It is also expected to suggest strategic implications to startups that need new funding.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.39-50
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• 2018

A main purpose of this research is to identify success factors of start-up based on the AER case study. As a result of case analysis, In the early stage, the success factors of start-up are the entrepreneur's history, experience, expertise, prompt judgment, problem-solving ability, the capacity and teamwork of its members, business networks and supporting government start-ups. In the commercialization stage, securing commercialization and investment funds, timing, differentiation strategy, overseas advancement, and acceptance of customer feedback are important. In the growth stage (maturity stage), new product launches and diversification, and establishment of organizational culture are important. Based on the results of this analysis, this study sought success factors and implications for each stage and sought research directions in the future.