• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.91-107
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• 2023

Lean startup is a concept that combines the words "lean," meaning an efficient way of running a business, and "startup," meaning a new business. It is often cited as a strategy for minimizing failure in early-stage businesses, especially in software-based startups. By scrutinizing the case of a startup L, this study suggests that lean startup methodology(LSM) can be useful for hardware and manufacturing companies and identifies ways for early startups to successfully implement LSM. To this end, the study explained the core of LSM including the concepts of hypothesis-driven approach, BML feedback loop, minimum viable product(MVP), and pivot. Five criteria to evaluate the successful implementation of LSM were derived from the core concepts and applied to evaluate the case of startup L . The early startup L pivoted its main business model from defecation alert system for patients with limited mobility to one for infants or toddlers, and finally to a smart bottle for infants. In developing the former two products, analyzed from LSM's perspective, company L neither established a specific customer value proposition for its startup idea and nor verified it through MVP experiment, thus failed to create a BML feedback loop. However, through two rounds of pivots, startup L discovered new target customers and customer needs, and was able to establish a successful business model by repeatedly experimenting with MVPs with minimal effort and time. In other words, Company L's case shows that it is essential to go through the customer-market validation stage at the beginning of the business, and that it should be done through an MVP method that does not waste the startup's time and resources. It also shows that it is necessary to abandon and pivot a product or service that customers do not want, even if it is technically superior and functionally complete. Lastly, the study proves that the lean startup methodology is not limited to the software industry, but can also be applied to technology-based hardware industry. The findings of this study can be used as guidelines and methodologies for early-stage companies to minimize failures and to accelerate the process of establishing a business model, scaling up, and going global.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.29-43
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• 2016

The Lean Startup, a methodology for minimizing failure rate of startups, has been receiving attention since its publication in 2011. Although it has been receiving enormous attention as an effective methodology of startups' growth and the emergence of unicorn companies, it is undeniable that the theoretical research and cases on this topic have not been fully accumulated in Korea. Progress of management theory has been made when combining the theory and case studies. In this paper, we thus excavated the 'Cardoc' case, which has applied the lean startup concept to the entire process of service and customer development from the inception of its product design. The following are the findings of the case. First, for the successful application of lean startup, it is essential that all team members to understand the lean startup concept and are willing to apply it thoroughly to the business management. Second, the prompt launching of MVP(Minimum Viable Product) is more important than table discussion. Third, it is crucial to select the appropriate key metrics and analytic tools for effective learning. Fourth, startup must scale up promptly as soon as it verifies the product-market fit through the BML(Build-Measure-Learn) iteration cycle. Fifth, all new business expansion should be lean. Cardoc is currently testing new MVPs in order to move onto the next scale-up process with huge investments in newly added segments. This study is meaningful in that it elaborates the representative case of a Korean startup that has applied the lean startup strategy under the circumstance of insufficient discussion of Korean startup cases in comparison with growing attention both in concept development and case accumulation abroad. We hope that this paper can be a stepping stone for future relevant research on the implementation of lean startup methodology in Korea.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.99-109
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• 2015

The investment in healthcare industry has recently increased not only for global ventures but also for the domestic ventures. However, there has been hardship of founding and investment caused by healthcare startups characteristics that are costly and time consuming. In this study, the applicability of 'Lean Startup' theory to healthcare ventures was explored through the case of a domestic startup which accomplished funding from VC and KOSDAQ after establishing based on its technology in healthcare industry. There have been numerous case studies that applied 'Lean Startup' to IT industry. However, this case study that applied 'Lean Startup' to healthcare industry have some implications as follow: First, it is critical to conduct a hypothesis testing at initial research stage through R&D of 'MVP' (Minimum Viable Product) as the prototype testing is strictly prohibited in healthcare industry. Second, healthcare R&D teams ought to be well organized as startup teams and all researchers should be equipped with entrepreneurship as the licensing process in healthcare industry is time-consuming and costly due to issues like clinical studies. Lastly, management skills as smart and light as 'Lean Startup' are required in order to encourage young engineers' technology startups.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.127-135
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• 2020

The purpose of this paper is to classify individual startups by growth stage based on data-based quantitative criteria. This is to provide a basis for systematic support for government startups based on accurate statistics on the startup growth process. This startups were the TIPS (Tech Incubator Program for Startup) support company, which used a relatively reliable startup. We found seed money to complete MVP (Minimum Viable Product) within 1.5 years after establishment, verified PMF (Product-Market Fit) within 1 year, attracted Series A investment within 2.5 years after establishment, and successfully commercialized it. It attracted Series B investment for stable growth within 1.5 years (Series B investment within 4 years from start-up). The results of the study, the division of government programs that support stage-based startup commercialization, that is, within three years and within seven years of establishment, is significant to date. Three directions are suggested for future research. First, develop indicators for monitoring startup growth stages. Second, it continuously updates the annual changes and tracks the growth stages of individual startups. Third, we discover the successful growth law of technology-based startups by applying in-depth case analysis of successful startups to the model.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.183-196
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• 2018

In this study, we conducted in - depth interviews of young entrepreneurs who are currently in the process of establishing new entrepreneurs management diagnosis and consulting for young entrepreneurs, and found the common difficulties experienced in young entrepreneurs' perception of entrepreneurship, In addition, through a case study, we verified product suitability through customer issue / solution suitability, idea marketability verification and MVP (Minimum Viable Product) using Lean Canvas according to the structure of Lean Start-up It is aimed at voluntary management diagnosis and consulting of small business owners, activation of young entrepreneurs' entrepreneurship, and reduction of startup failure rate. The purpose of this study is to examine the items of five young entrepreneurs from the perspective of the customer for about 10 months, focusing on the case of small entrepreneurs in the small entrepreneurs support project. Or we could provide the customer's problem or solution based on Lean Start-up. This study was conducted as a case - based qualitative study due to the limited sample and it is hoped that this study will be used as a basic research to verify the effectiveness of the lean start-up methodology for small business owners through quantitative research.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.89-104
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• 2021

Food delivery service combined with IT technology and HMR (Home Meal Replacement) are rapidly growing due to the COVID-19. Recently, the demand for salads along with HMR has increased among office workers in their 20s and 30s who are interested in health and beauty. Freshcode is a food startup with 6 years of experience that started selling salad products through O2O service. Freshcode applied for a patent for a service that collects orders from nearby areas and delivers them on the same day to a designated delivery address 'FCOSPOT' to save shipping costs. In March 2021, in recognition of the growth potential of the regular delivery service, Freshcode received an investment of 6 billion won in Series A. This study may have practical implications to early-stage startups and scale-up stage startups through a longitudinal case study on the growth of a single company. As for the research method, the lean startup methodology and lean canvas were used in the early stage of startup. In particular, the process of the build-measure and learn feedback-loop, which is the core of lean startup methodology, was applied to each major decision-making step. In the scale-up stage after 5 years, the business model canvas was used to schematize the growth as a food online O2O platform to verify continuous innovation. This case study has three main findings. First, the idea of 'FCOSPOT' was successfully implemented through the Lean Startup methodology. Second, Freshcode demonstrated the scalability of the differentiated business model of shared base delivery O2O. Third, a key factor of success was the digital integrated communication operation strategy that maximizes the experience for the created customers.