• Asian Journal of Innovation and Policy
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.97-121
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• 2019

The Korean government has focused on universities or colleges as the main targets of its startup policy since the 2010s. However, the performance is not so good, with a low survival rate. The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that underpin the success of student startups. First, through a review of the literature, this study compared the success factors of student startups with those of venture startups, which means the general startup sector, as well as youth startups, also a focus of startup policy targeting youngsters outside universities or colleges. Second, we analyzed case studies of startup companies connected University H. The literature review showed that the main target of student startups is the employment of university students. There is a lack of studies on success factors; existing studies only emphasize the entrepreneurship of students. The results of case studies showed several factors of success similar to those of general venture startups: founders, business model and resources including team, and mentoring.

• East Asian Journal of Business Economics (EAJBE)
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.21-25
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• 2015

Investment process on startup companies faces several difficulties based on the characteristics of this type of companies, such as lack of historical data, current operating losses and absence of comparable companies. In this paper we focus in a new methodology based on ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operators. OWA operators are useful instruments that enable the aggregation of information; in other words, from a data set we are able to obtain a single representative value of that set. The investment methodology presented consists on the application of OWA operators to the targeted startup companies based on the capacity of cash-flow generation and also on the planned scenario of future growth for each company. This paper shows that the methodology proposed can serve as a valuable tool, complementing the qualitative criteria (which, obviously, should not be ignored) for assessing and selecting a start-up investment.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.1-21
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• 2021

Recently, the importance of entrepreneurship based on innovative ideas is being emphasized. Most startup companies misunderstand that a good solution is a good idea, so they try to start a business by choosing an idea that prioritizes solutions, products, and technology rather than problem-first. However, to be a successful startup, it is essential to focus on the quality of the problems your customers are trying to solve. The online community is a place where many people exchange their thoughts and communicate with each other through a network, and communities about consumption, a concern of modern people, are developing. Against this background, this study proposed an integrated methodology that combines big data and netnography analysis so that entrepreneurs can use online community data to derive customer-centered startup ideas. The integrated methodology was verified based on the actual start-up case, who derived a startup idea based on the data of domestic cloth diapers online cafe. The case company found customer problems based on online community data and used it to develop startup items and new products. The integrated methodology for deriving entrepreneurial ideas in this study is expected to be an important guideline that explains in detail the consumer-centered idea derivation process.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.47-64
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• 2017

Three years after establishment, companies are said to face a period of risk called the "valley of death." To start a venture company and make it sustainable, the chance of failure must be minimized. According to an in-depth assessment report on special taxation in 2015, the one-year survival rate of Korean companies was about 60 percent and the five-year survival rate about 30%. These rates are low compared to those of major OECD member countries. Worse, such rates in Korea are decreasing year by year. The purpose of this study is to classify the success factors behind venture companies into human capital, social capital and financial capital, and verify through empirical analysis the factors influencing the success of venture companies based on the mediating roles of capability of the startup team and that for innovation. To find the success factors behind venture companies, this study first examined the theories derived from previous studies. SPSS 21 was used as the study method, while descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis and CMB test were conducted. In addition, SmartPLS 2 was used for confirmatory factor analysis, hypothesis test, mediation effect. The results of this study can help efforts toward job creation and economic revitalization pursued by the creative economy policy of the incumbent Korean administration. They can also be used as the cornerstone for venture companies in their pursuit of success.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.177-191
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• 2023

This study analyzes the types of linkages between major projects used by firms that attracted venture capital among firms that received government support in the field of SME startups. It identifies the types of linkages between support programs related to attracting venture investment and verifies the usefulness of integrated and cooperative support. The main findings of this study are as follows. First, Startup Success Packages, Startup Foundation Funds*, Youth Entrepreneurship Centers, and Training are the main programs used by startups and venture firms, and support-implementing agencies use these programs to provide support for each stage of growth. Second, the majority of startups and venture firms receiving policy support for job creation and manpower enhancement projects. Third, export-type growth companies receive continuous support from MSS, MOTIE, MSIT, and KIPO. Fourth, job creation programs drive the employment performance and creation of companies. Fifth, local government support projects tend to rely heavily on central government support programs. Sixth, growth companies in the startup and venture sector have a clear link to credit guarantee scheme by KIBO. These findings provide empirical evidence on the necessity and feasibility of integrated and collaborative support, and are expected to contribute to the direction of better support policies.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.43-60
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• 2023

Although the importance of starting a business is being emphasized, it is not easy for a start-up to survive. Therefore, it is necessary to come up with a plan to strengthen startup satisfaction and improve the survival rate of startup companies. In this study, we examined the impact of start-up motivation, start-up capabilities, and start-up passion of start-up companies on start-up satisfaction, as well as the moderating effect according to the founding type of general start-up companies and startups. Entrepreneurship motivation was divided into self-actualization motivation and pro-social motivation. Entrepreneurship capabilities were divided into marketing capabilities and experience capabilities. Entrepreneurship passion was divided into harmonious passion and obsessive passion. Empirical analysis was conducted by receiving surveys from 361 managers of general and startup companies within 7 years of founding their businesses online and offline. As a result, self-actualization motivation, pro-social motivation, marketing competency, experiential competency, and harmonious passion had a significant positive (+) effect on startup satisfaction. However, obsessive passion did not have a significant effect. In addition, the magnitude of influence on startup satisfaction appeared in the following order: harmonious passion, marketing competency, self-actualization motivation, pro-social motivation, and experiential competency. The moderating effect according to the type of founding of general start-ups and startups was found in pro-social motivation, experience competency, and passion for harmony. However, there was no significant moderating effect between self-actualization motivation, marketing competency, obsessive passion, and entrepreneurship satisfaction. This study presented academic implications that harmonious passion and marketing capabilities are important factors in improving startup satisfaction. In addition, practical and policy implications were presented, including the need for programs to support the psychological stability of startup business owners, strengthening startup capabilities through experts, and strengthening startup education programs that can foster self-actualization motivation and pro-social motivation.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.1-15
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• 2023

This study divided articles into two time periods, from 2012 to 2022, with the aim of using big data analysis to look at patterns in the ecosystem of fashion start-ups. The research method extracted top keywords based on TF(Term Frequency) and TF-IDF(Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency), analyzed the network, and derived centrality values. As a result of comparing the first and second fashion startup ecosystems, elements of policy, support, market, finance, and human capital were derived in the first period. In addition, in the second period, elements of policy, support, market, finance, and culture were derived. In the first period, the fashion startup ecosystem focused on fostering new designer startups by emphasizing support, finance, and human capital factors and focusing on policies. Meanwhile, in the second period, online-based fashion platform startups and fashion tech startups appeared with the support of digital transformation and fulfillment services triggered by COVID-19(Corona Virus Disease 19), private finances were emphasized, and cultural factors were derived along with success stories of fashion startups. This study is meaningful in that it helps in developing strategies for fashion startups to grow into sustainable companies.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.22 no.11
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• pp.1495-1504
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• 2018

The Moon administration has proposed three major directions for startup growth: the creation of a new environment, active investment, and the creation of a virtuous cycle in venture investment. The policy is progressive but not sufficient to create a startup innovation boom in the current Korean economic environment. ICT Startup support policies must pay more attention to the product release stage. For growth of startups and small businesses it is important to establish a close value chain to secure competitiveness in the global market. It is necessary to secure a bridgehead to advance into the global market, including technical cooperation with large companies and joint advancement overseas. The final goal of the startup policy should be the continuous growth of the national economy and the expansion of employment. The establishment of fair trade and the strengthening of the startup ecosystem are important to foster a startup-friendly environment. Funding programs requires a shift from general support to enhanced choice and focus.

• 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.18 no.2
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• pp.95-111
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• 2023

Korea has achieved a high startup rate by promoting government-led startup policies for national economic and industrial development. However, as high as the startup rate is, the closure rate of startup companies can be judged to be insufficient for the qualitative growth of the domestic startup ecosystem. This study aims to investigate how to improve the survival rate of startups by overcoming the valley of death from a location environment perspective. It analyzes the effects of technology orientation and market orientation of start-ups on management performance and the moderating effects of economic, accessibility, and network factors that constitute the location environment. To achieve the research objectives, the empirical analysis was conducted on start-up companies that received corporate support projects from innovation intermediary organizations. The results show that R&D capability of technology orientation has a significant effect on management performance, and market information generation and market information response of market orientation have a significant effect on management performance. As for the moderating effect, accessibility, a sub-factor of the location environment, has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between technological innovation and managerial performance, and the location environment (economy, accessibility, and network) has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between market information generation and managerial performance. This study compared and analyzed previous studies on the success and failure of start-ups and identified common factors. In addition, this study provides policy implications for the sustainable growth of startups through empirical analysis and interview with stakeholders. For future research, it is necessary to compare and analyze start-ups in metropolitan areas and non-metropolitan areas. In addition, it is necessary to study startups that have moved out of the region and into the metropolitan area to find ways to develop the regional startup ecosystem.