• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.21-35
• /
• 2023

Expectations surrounding generative AI technology and its profound ramifications are sweeping across various industrial domains. Given the anticipated pivotal role of the startup ecosystem in the utilization and advancement of generative AI technology, it is imperative to cultivate a deeper comprehension of the present state and distinctive attributes characterizing venture capital (VC) investments within this domain. The current investigation delves into South Korea's landscape of VC investment deals and prognosticates the projected VC investments by juxtaposing these against the United States, the frontrunner in the generative AI industry and its associated ecosystem. For analytical purposes, a compilation of 286 investment deals originating from 117 U.S. generative AI startups spanning the period from 2008 to 2023, as well as 144 investment deals from 42 South Korean generative AI startups covering the years 2011 to 2023, was amassed to construct new datasets. The outcomes of this endeavor reveal an upward trajectory in the count of VC investment deals within both the U.S. and South Korea during recent years. Predominantly, these deals have been concentrated within the early-stage investment realm. Noteworthy disparities between the two nations have also come to light. Specifically, in the U.S., in contrast to South Korea, the quantum of recent VC deals has escalated, marking an augmentation ranging from 285% to 488% in the corresponding developmental stage. While the interval between disparate investment stages demonstrated a slight elongation in South Korea relative to the U.S., this discrepancy did not achieve statistical significance. Furthermore, the proportion of VC investments channeled into generative AI enterprises, relative to the aggregate number of deals, exhibited a higher quotient in South Korea compared to the U.S. Upon a comprehensive sectoral breakdown of generative AI, it was discerned that within the U.S., 59.2% of total deals were concentrated in the text and model sectors, whereas in South Korea, 61.9% of deals centered around the video, image, and chat sectors. Through forecasting, the anticipated VC investments in South Korea from 2023 to 2029 were derived via four distinct models, culminating in an estimated average requirement of 3.4 trillion Korean won (ranging from at least 2.408 trillion won to a maximum of 5.919 trillion won). This research bears pragmatic significance as it methodically dissects VC investments within the generative AI domain across both the U.S. and South Korea, culminating in the presentation of an estimated VC investment projection for the latter. Furthermore, its academic significance lies in laying the groundwork for prospective scholarly inquiries by dissecting the current landscape of generative AI VC investments, a sphere that has hitherto remained void of rigorous academic investigation supported by empirical data. Additionally, the study introduces two innovative methodologies for the prediction of VC investment sums. Upon broader integration, application, and refinement of these methodologies within diverse academic explorations, they stand poised to enhance the prognosticative capacity pertaining to VC investment costs.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.37-50
• /
• 2023

Venture capital invests the necessary capital and supports management and technology in promising small and medium-sized venture companies in the early stages of start-up with promising technology and excellent manpower. It plays a role as a key player in the venture ecosystem that realizes profits by collecting the investment through various means after growth. Venture capital's job is to recruit various investors(LPs) to invest in small and medium-sized venture companies with growth potential through the formation of venture investment funds, and to collect investment as companies grow, distribute and reinvest. The main tasks of venture capitalists, which play the most important role in venture investment, are finding promising companies, corporate analysis and evaluation, investment screening, follow-up management, and investment recovery. Venture capital's success indicators are fund formation and return on investment, and venture capitalists are rewarded with annual salary, performance-based incentive, and promotion with work performance such as investment, exit, and fund formation. Compared to the recent rapidly growing venture investment market, investment manpower is insufficient, and venture capital is making great efforts to foster manpower and establish infrastructure and systems for long-term service, but research has been conducted mainly from a quantitative perspective. Accordingly, this study aims to empirically analyzed the impact of investment experience, delegation of authority, job fit, and peer relationships on fund formation and return on investment according to the characteristics of the venture capital industry. The results of these empirical studies suggested that future venture capital needs a job environment and manpower operation strategy so that venture capitalists with high job fit and investment experience can work for a long time.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.65-76
• /
• 2023

In the field of technology entrepreneurship and startups, the development of Artificial Intelligence(AI) has emerged as a key topic for business model innovation. As a result, venture firms are making various efforts centered on AI to secure competitiveness(Kim & Geum, 2023). The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between the development of GenAI technology and the startup ecosystem by analyzing domestic news articles to identify trends in the technology startup field. Using BIG Kinds, this study examined the changes in GenAI-related news articles, major issues, and trends in Korean news articles from 1990 to August 10, 2023, focusing on the emergence of ChatGPT before and after, and visualized the relevance through network analysis and keyword visualization. The results of the study showed that the mention of GenAI gradually increased in the articles from 2017 to 2023. In particular, OpenAI's ChatGPT service based on GPT-3.5 was highlighted as a major issue, indicating the popularization of language model-based GenAI technologies such as OpenAI's DALL-E, Google's MusicLM, and VoyagerX's Vrew. This proves the usefulness of GenAI in various fields, and since the launch of ChatGPT, Korean companies have been actively developing Korean language models. Startups such as Ritten Technologies are also utilizing GenAI to expand their scope in the technology startup field. This study confirms the connection between GenAI technology and startup entrepreneurship activities, which suggests that it can support the construction of innovative business strategies, and is expected to continue to shape the development of GenAI technology and the growth of the startup ecosystem. Further research is needed to explore international trends, the utilization of various analysis methods, and the possibility of applying GenAI in the real world. These efforts are expected to contribute to the development of GenAI technology and the growth of the startup ecosystem.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.117-129
• /
• 2023

Organizations must seek change in order to adapt to environmental changes and achieve better performance. However, despite this obvious statement, empirical analysis has been almost non-existent due to the difficulty of manipulating organizational performance or change. In this study, we overcame these limitations and analyzed the causes and effects of organizational change by assuming a professional sports team as a venture company, which is relatively easy to objectively measure and evaluate organizational change or performance. We systematically collected and preprocessed traditional and advanced metrics of National Basketball Association (NBA) statistics along with preprocessed trade data from eight years of regular seasons (2014~2015-2021~2022) to analyze our research model. Assessment of process macro model 7 derives the following empirical result. The results of the empirical analysis depict that NBA teams with low organizational performance in the previous season are more likely to make organizational changes through player trades to improve performance. Into the bargain player trades mediate the static relationship between the winning percentage in the previous season and the winning percentage in the current season. However, the indirect effect of a team's previous season's performance on player trades appears to vary depending on the current situations and context of each NBA team. Teams that made the playoffs in the previous season tend to make fewer trades than teams that did not and the previous season's performance is highly correlated with the current season's performance. On the other hand, teams that did not make the playoffs in the previous season tend to make a relatively larger amount of player trades in total, and the mediating effect of trades vanishes in this case. In other words, teams that did not make the playoffs in the previous season experience a larger change in performance due to trades than teams that made the playoffs, even if they achieved the same winning percentage. This empirical analysis of the inverse relationship between organizational change and the performance of professional sports teams has both theoretical and practical implications in the field of sports industry and management by analyzing the fundamentals of organizational change and the performance of professional sports teams.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.131-148
• /
• 2023

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of entrepreneurial environment and entrepreneurial competency on entrepreneurial intention by setting degree of self-determination as a moderating variable for pre-entrepreneur of agriculture industry. The entrepreneurial environment was divided into perceived support and perceived barriers, and the sub-variables of entrepreneurial competence were set as creativity, problem solving, communication, marketing, and business plan. 253 questionnaires were used for empirical analysis. The results of the analysis using SPSS v25.0 and Process macro v4.2 are as follows. First, the perceived support and perceived barriers of the entrepreneurial environment have a significant effect on entrepreneurial intention. Creativity, problem solving, marketing and business plan of entrepreneurial competency have a significant effect on entrepreneurial intention, but the effect of communication was non-significant. Second, the degree of self-determination did not moderate the relationship between perceived support, barriers and entrepreneurial intention. This means that the level of self-determination may not have a significant effect on the relationship between entrepreneurial environment and entrepreneurial intention. Third, the degree of self-determination was found to moderate the relationship between creativity, problem solving, communication, marketing and business plan of entrepreneurial competency and entrepreneurial intention. Specifically, as the degree of self-determination increases, the size of the influence of creativity, problem solving, marketing, and business plan on entrepreneurial intention plays a role of strengthening in a positive direction. On the other hand, as the degree of self-determination increases, the degree of self-determination, which weakens the relationship between communication and entrepreneurial intention. Future research will require exploration of other factors that can explain entrepreneurial environment and entrepreneurial capacity, and follow-up studies are needed to analyze the moderated mediating effects through conditional process models that include new mediating and moderating variables.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.165-175
• /
• 2023

In venture creation research, studying 'entrepreneurial leadership' is important for uncovering and comprehending the underlying causal process in innovative behavior performance. Although previous studies provide that entrepreneurial leadership enhances followers' innovative behavior, there is few research on entrepreneurial leadership and followers' characteristics interaction. The present study's focus is paradoxical effects of entrepreneurial leadership on self-efficacy and innovative behavior. On the basis of individual regulatory focus, this study suggests that interaction effects of entrepreneurial leadership and followers' regulatory focus differed in promotion view and prevention view followers' innovative behavior. To strengthen the casual mechanism, this study conducted in priming experiment method using employees in SMEs. This study used a 2(entrepreneurial leadership vs. control) x 2 (regulatory focus: promotion vs. prevention) between-participants design. The results of this study provide that (1) Individuals in promotion focus especially benefited from entrepreneurial leadership in terms of its effect on their self-efficacy and innovative behavior; (2) whereas entrepreneurial leadership was negatively related to self-efficacy and innovative behavior of followers' prevention focus. In sum, results of the present study supporting evidence for hypotheses, combined effect of entrepreneurial leadership and regulatory focus on innovative behavior through self-efficacy. Experimental results confirmed hypotheses of this study, revealing that promotion focus show more innovative behavior than prevention focus when their leaders' leadership style is entrepreneurial leadership. Also, the paradoxical effect of entrepreneurial leadership and regulatory focus of followers on innovative behavior was mediated by followers' self-efficacy. This study helps explain how leaders' entrepreneurial leadership boost followers' innovative behavior, particularly for those employees who have promotion focus. The current study contributes to the theory of entrepreneurial leadership and regulatory focus and innovation literature. Findings of this study shed light on the organizational processes that shape innovative behavior in venture/startup corporations and provide contributions for venture business field.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.18 no.5
• /
• pp.1-16
• /
• 2023

Due to imbalances in supply and demand within the labor market, start-ups have emerged as crucial players in the generation of high-quality employment opportunities, particularly in stagnant job markets. In response to this trend, governments are allocating substantial financial and human resources to initiatives that support start-up development. This has led to an increasing rate of engagement in start-up ventures across diverse age groups, not limited to younger individuals. Start-ups are enterprises focused on the commercialization of innovative ideas with the aim of achieving profitability in the marketplace. Research concerning the successful market integration of new products and the attainment of sustainable growth is pivotal. Such research is instrumental not only for the success of start-ups but also for realizing the broader social functions and contributions that these enterprises can offer. Previous research has often examined new product market-entry strategies, often referred to as new product marketing, particularly for large companies and SMEs. However, there is a gap in studies focusing on prototype marketing strategies specific to start-ups. Thus, this study aims to examine the impact of Pre-announcing marketing strategies on the market attention garnered by start-ups with low recognition and limited infrastructure, and how such attention contributes to their sustainable growth. Specifically, the study aims to uncover the causal relationship between information attributes like relevance, vividness, and novelty in building customer relationships, and their impact on purchase intentions influenced by performance expectations and hedonic motivations. In terms of Pre-announcing information attributes, relevance, vividness, and novelty positively influence performance expectations and hedonic motivations as outlined in the extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2). These factors, in turn, positively impact the purchase intention for pre-announced new products from start-ups. These findings are expected to provide both theory and practical insights into the factors influencing market entry through the use of Pre-announcing marketing strategies for start-up new products.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.18 no.5
• /
• pp.17-32
• /
• 2023

The entrepreneurial activities of college students play a significant role in modern economic and social development, particularly as a solution to the changing economic landscape and youth unemployment issues. Introducing innovative ideas and technologies into the market through entrepreneurship can contribute to sustainable economic growth and social value. Additionally, the entrepreneurial intentions of college students are shaped by various factors, making it crucial to deeply understand and appropriately support these elements. To this end, this study systematically explores the importance and impact of role models through a multiple serial mediation analysis. Through a survey of 300 college students, the study analyzed how two psychological variables, growth mindset and entrepreneurial self-efficacy, mediate the influence of role models on entrepreneurial intentions. The presence and success stories of role models were found to enhance the growth mindset of college students, which in turn boosts their entrepreneurial self-efficacy and ultimately strengthens their entrepreneurial intentions. The analysis revealed that exposure to role models significantly influences the formation of a growth mindset among college students. This mindset fosters a positive attitude towards viewing challenges and failures in entrepreneurship as learning opportunities. Such a mindset further enhances entrepreneurial self-efficacy, thereby strengthening the intention to engage in entrepreneurial activities. This research offers insights by integrating various theories, such as mindset theory and social learning theory, to deeply understand the complex process of forming entrepreneurial intentions. Practically, this study provides important guidelines for the design and implementation of college entrepreneurship education. Utilizing role models can significantly enhance students' entrepreneurial intentions, and educational programs can strengthen students' growth mindset and entrepreneurial self-efficacy by sharing entrepreneurial experiences and knowledge through role models. In conclusion, this study provides a systematic and empirical analysis of the various factors and their complex interactions that impact the entrepreneurial intentions of college students. It confirms that psychological factors like growth mindset and entrepreneurial self-efficacy play a significant role in shaping entrepreneurial intentions, beyond mere information or technical education. This research emphasizes that these psychological factors should be comprehensively considered when developing and implementing policies and programs related to college entrepreneurship education.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.18 no.5
• /
• pp.33-44
• /
• 2023

Entrepreneurial self-efficacy is an important variable that explains people's attitudes and behaviors toward start-ups. In this study, we focused on individual psychological characteristics variables such as luck in belief and positive cognitive bias that affect entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Among these variables, we paid particular attention to luck in belief. The belief that business success depends on luck is widespread, but scientific verification about it has not been much. The reason for the academic indifference is that luck is a kind of superstition, related to precognition or extrasensory perception, and randomly caused by the external environment. The study of luck began in earnest as a measure to measure luck as an individual characteristic variable such as personality was developed. The purpose of this study is to examine the existing studies on luck in belief and to examine the effect of this luck in belief on positive cognitive bias and entrepreneurial self-efficacy through empirical analysis. For empirical analysis, this study conducted an on-line survey of 400 ordinary people and conducted a structural equation model analysis using AMOS 21.0 to verify the hypothesis. As a result of hypothesis testing, all hypotheses that luck in belief would have a positive effect on positive cognitive bias(self-enhancement bias, illusion of control bias, unrealism optimistic bias) were adopted. The hypothesis that positive cognitive bias(self-enhancement bias, illusion of control bias, unrealistic optimism bias) will have a positive effect on entrepreneurial self-efficacy was also adopted. Additional analysis was conducted to examine the mediating role of positive cognitive bias in the relationship between luck in belief and entrepreneurial self-efficacy, which showed that 'luck in belief→positive cognitive bias →entrepreneurial self-efficacy' were statistically significant. Through this, we confirmed the mediating effect of positive cognitive bias in the relationship between luck in belief and entrepreneurial self-efficacy. In the conclusion, the implications and limitations of the study were presented based on the results of this study.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.18 no.5
• /
• pp.63-75
• /
• 2023

This study conducted empirical analysis on the factors affecting the investment performance of 205 domestic venture funds (with a total liquidation amount of 7.25 trillion KRW) newly formed from 2007 to 2017 and completely liquidated as of the end of 2022. Due to the nature of private equity funds, obtaining empirical data is extremely challenging, especially for data post-COVID-19 era liquidations. Nevertheless, despite these challenges, it is meaningful to analyze the impact on the investment returns of domestic venture funds using the most recent data available from the past 10 years. This study categorized the factors influencing venture fund performance into external environmental factors and internal factors. External environmental factors included "economic cycles," "stock markets," "venture markets," and "exit markets," while internal factors included the fund management company's capabilities in terms of "experience," "professional personnel," and "assets under management (AUM)." The fund structure was also categorized into "fund size" and "fund length" for comparative analysis. In summary, the analysis yielded the following results: First, the 3-year government bond yield, which represents economic cycles well, was found to have a significant impact on fund performance. Second, the average 3-month KOSDAQ index return after fund formation had a statistically significant positive effect on fund performance. Third, the number of IPOs, indicating the competition intensity at the time of venture fund liquidation, was shown to have a negative effect on fund performance. Fourth, it was observed that the larger the AUM of the fund management company, the better the fund's returns. Finally, venture fund returns showed variations depending on the year of formation (Vintage). Therefore, when individuals consider investing in venture funds, it is considered a highly effective investment strategy to construct an investment portfolio taking into account not only external environmental factors and internal fund factors but also the vintage year.