• 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.

• Journal of the Korean Regional Science Association
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.17-27
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to analyze the determinants of start-ups by industry based on the theoretical background of entrepreneurship. For this purpose, regional industrial structure and local labor market structure are considered in order to focus on regional factors in addition to economic factors, income factors, and technological innovation factors. As an analyzed result, three theories of entrepreneurship generally agree with the determinants of industry - specific entrepreneurship. During the economic recession, the number of start-ups has increased. The intra-regional consumption and the local government expenditure per capita have also positive effects on the start-up. The incubation center has a positive effect on the start - up in the manufacturing sector. Therefore, the academic-industrial leading various incubation facilities should be activated in addition to the central or local government leading incubation centers, which is a part of the policy to support start-ups of central and local governments. In addition, population growth is a very important factor in terms of potential demand creation, and the characteristics of regional industrial structure and the effect of human capital within the region differ by industry. In the case of the manufacturing industry, the accumulation effect positively influences the start-up of the industry. In other service industries, the human capital variable had the greatest effect on the start-up when all other conditions are constant.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.41-58
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• 2020

A plan to promote public technology-based start-ups as a way to enhance the use of public technology has been emphasized. However, the problem of creating commercial value has persisted due to the lack of reproducibility and readiness of public technology. Although gap exists in the linking process between the public and private sector, it is difficult to find objective empirical evidence as most of them are only qualitative research. Our empirical works examine the impact of subsequent support of the public research institute on the commercialization of public technologies. Then, we analyze how commercialization of public technologies affects the growth of technology-based startups using 2-stage least square (2SLS) model. We find that the linkage with the technology subject contribute to the successful commercialization of public technology, and further to the survival and growth of technology-based start-ups. Our finding suggests that knowledge management system, to facilitate interaction between technology developer and consumers, is needed for the success of public technology-based start-ups.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.7-18
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• 2012

So many researchers have been interested in key success factors of technological start-ups. However, even previous studies have focussed on key success factors, as their findings have not been consistent. The purpose of this study is to investigate the determinants of technological start-ups' performance. The first aim of this study is intended to explores impact of entrepreneurs' characteristics, technological capabilities and network on firm performance. The second aim is to examine the causal relationships among latent variables with firm performance and with the use of path analysis. For this study, information has been gathered through surveys from entrepreneurs of 701 Korean technological start-up companies. As for analysis of the data, SPSS 18.0 OK for Windows and AMOS 4.0 were used for testing of hypothesis. Results of the hypothesis testing are summarized as follows: First, it was found that entrepreneurs' characteristics, technological capabilities and network had statistically significant influence on firm performance. Second, entrepreneurs' characteristics had significant influence on technological capabilities and network. Third, network did not have significant influence on technological capabilities. The major contributions of this study are (1) identifying the determinants on firm performance of technology-based start-ups by means of structural equation model, (2) verifying effects on firm performance of technology-based start-ups by the variables.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.135-160
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• 2010

This study was designed to analyze, by using a hierarchical logistic regression analysis method, how difficulties in business start-ups and personal characteristics independently determine the utilization of micro-enterprise support services. The services were categorized into eight areas: capital, technical service, psychological service, item feasibility and business plan, site selection and interior service, marketing, finance and accounting, employment service. This study found that difficulties in business start-ups were a significant factor in six areas. Personal characteristics were a significant factor in four areas, when difficulties in start-ups were controlled. Among the personal characteristics, higher possibility of service utilization was anticipated in people with start-ups experience than people without experience, and in women than men. This results point out that service strategies should be targeted for people with difficulties in order to improve the accessibility of micro-enterprises support services. The results also indicate that the strategies should be considered for people with no start-ups experience, low academic ability, and female entrepreneurs who are vulnerable.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.1-19
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• 2021

The purpose of this research is to improve the investment success rate for startups in the water industry for the development of the entrepreneurial environment of the Korean water industry. In this research, we identified investment determinants through prior research and stratified them, and then surveyed the investor group at the beginning of the start-up using the FGI method, and determined the order of the investment determinants of investors. At the same time, we classified 41 start-ups related to the water industry into two groups: the group that received investment and the group that did not in the early stages of the start-up. Then we investigated the understanding of the investor's investment determinants, ranked them, and compared them by using the AHP technique. Through this, this research proposes five implications. First, it is important for start-ups in the early stages to receive seed investment to revitalize investment for startups in the water industry. For this, startups need to understand investors and prepare to attract investment with the perspective of angel investors rather than the perspective of VC investors. Second, Start-ups in the water sector should consider that the characteristics of the founder are important in order to receive seed investment, and also need to define their business at the industry and market level, and provide relevant rationale to meet the expectations of investors who value industry expertise and experience, and to increase the possibility of seed investment, which is important in the early stages of a startup. Third, institutions, such as K-water(Korea Water Resources Corporation), that support water industry startups need to conduct open innovation business opportunities discovery programs linked to startups so that startups currently participating in the startup support program could have business opportunities from the business infrastructure of platform-forming companies in the water industry. In particular, such institutions should help founders develop their industrial expertise and careers by supporting this type of start-up preparation process through the participation of in-house venture founders. Fourth, when K-water uses the government start-up support fund to discover and foster founders, it should increase initial contact with seed investors, conduct more thorough verification of business plans, and develop programs that use government start-up support funds to prepare a business suitable for seed angel investors. Fifth, K-water should support seed by connecting funds for initial investment among funds operated by itself. It is also necessary to develop a program that links the company receiving the seed investment with VC investment, not angel investment in cooperation with the VC fund operation entity participating as an LP so that companies that have attracted seed investment could attract follow-up VC investment.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.17-29
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• 2020

In recent years, universities, with their intellectual properties and human resources, become main drivers for technology transfer. Universities in Korea have various organizations to support the technology transfer and commercialization. Among them, a technology holding company plays the critical role to successfully implement the task. Nonetheless, the performance of the technology holding company is well below the expectation of industry, government and universities themselves. The lack of expertises and experience together with the ill-suited government policies could be attributable to the observed under performance. More recently, however, the technology holding company acts as an accelerator or venture capital to search and fund promising start-ups. The university venture capital thus transforms a traditional university into an entrepreneurial university. Focusing on the role of the technology holding company as an accelerator or venture capital, the paper analyzes the characteristics of the university venture capital and the invested start-ups. The performance of the university venture capital is measured and the determinants of the performance are empirically tested. The results show that the co-investment of outside investors and the support of government program, known as Tech Incubator Program for Startup Korea, yields the highest performance. The result indicates that the coordination of the university venture capital, industry and government is the key to the success of early start-ups. The paper is the first to analyze the performance of the university venture capitals in Korea and thus contributes to the literature.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.115-140
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• 2011

The fact that innovation activities of venture firms and start-ups play crucial role in driving industrial development and economic growth has significantly increased the importance of business incubator and techno-park which promote new businesses creations. This review paper aims at not only generating performance measurement index of business incubators but also categorizing performance determinants in accordance with three different theoretical perspectives of resource-based view, strategy patterns, and social networks. Futhermore, as future direction of research, this paper emphasizes structured research efforts on the critical effects of incubator's governance patterns, external and regional contexts, and analysis of government incubator policy.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.1-16
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• 2022

Although start-up is a key national strategy to increase national competitiveness and create employment, the survival rate of start-ups has not improved significantly. This is an important reason for the inability to provide timely and appropriate support to startups, which are in the early stages of start-up, due to the unique limitations of existing start-up support institutions and investors. The relatively recent accelerator is attracting attention as a subject of solving the above problems through professional incubation and investment. However, there are only a few empirical studies on investment determinants that affect the survival and success of accelerators, and there is a lack of theoretical evidence. Accordingly, in previous studies, 12 investment determinants were derived from a static, strategic, and dynamic perspective as accelerator investment determinants based on a business model innovation framework. This study subdivided the accelerator investment determinants derived through previous studies into 21 and analyzed the importance and priority of each factor using AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) analysis technique for domestic accelerator investment experts. As a result of the analysis, the top factors of importance of accelerator investment determinants were in the order of 'human resources', 'customer and market', 'intellectual resources', and 'entrepreneur's ability to realize opportunities'. It can be seen that the accelerator considers the core competencies of startups to implement solutions as the most important factor when making startup investment decisions. It was also confirmed that accelerators are strategic to create a clear value proposition and differentiated market position based on the core competitiveness of startups, and that the core value delivery method prefers a market-oriented business model and recognizes entrepreneurs's innovation capability is an important factor to realize a business model with limited resources in a rapidly changing market. This study is of academic significance in that it analyzes the importance and priority of accelerator investment determinants through demonstration as a follow-up study on accelerator investment determinants derived based on business model innovation theory that reflects the nature, goals, and major activities of accelerator investment. In addition, it is of practical value as it contributes to revitalizing the domestic startup investment ecosystem by providing accelerators with theoretical grounds for investment decisions and specific information on detailed investment determinants.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.65-77
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• 2017

The syndicated investment strategy of venture capital has merits such as reductionof investment risk, efficient management of investment resources, and information asymmetry mitigation. This study analyzes the investment strategy and network of venture capital by collecting and analyzing investment information of Korean venture capital on Korean start-ups for three years from 2014 to 2016. We could not find statistically significant association with the choice of syndicated investment of the stage of start-ups, the venture capital expertise (investment concentration), internal competence (number of workforce and professional manpower), and the breadth of investment network. As a result of this study, the factors that determine venture capital 's syndicated investment in Korea are only the financial factors such as the size of the investment amount and the size of the fund besides the business field of the invested company. The results suggest that the majority of venture capital firms in Korea may not customize their investment strategies in terms of their expertise or inherent business risks of invested companies.