• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.119-130
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• 2019

Although a well-established line of research has addressed the funding decision, the activities of investee startups to receive funding have been overlooked because prior research has been conduced from investor's point of view. In addition, funding does not result from one off decisions but from decision process with many stages. Moreover, the emphasis placed on specific investment criteria varies by different stages during the process. Therefore, understanding the initial funding of startups requires to analyze the strategic behaviors of startups throughout the entire funding decision process from first meeting with investors to funding success. This study investigates the initial funding process of startups, and the analysis is based on a case study of LetinAR one of the successful startups founded by students in South Korea. This study investigates how early start-ups were able to receive funding from startup's point of view, and the analysis is based on a case study of LetinAR, an augmented reality(AR) startup using Pin mirror technology. By adding "legitimacy building" stage that had not been addressed previously, we divided funding process into four stages: 1) legitimacy building, 2) familiarization, 3) screening, and 4) bargaining phase. We did not only analyze major criteria, but also strategic activities of startup at each stage. This study makes a contribution by helping us understand complicated process of funding and the successful strategic behavior of investor backed startups.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.17 no.8
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• pp.81-88
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• 2019

This study suggests the ways to promote the technology startups founded by professor, who differs from student or researcher in social status, risk-taking tendency, and motivation. Literatures were reviewed to understand the advantage of faculty's tech start-up, foreign cases, and related researches. In addition, key stakeholders were interviewed. The study shows that domestic faculty entrepreneurship is currently in infant stage while facing obstacles in institutional, financial and practical aspects. In order to promote faculty entrepreneurship, the study suggests that university and professor set up the benefit sharing structure in advance, that the public sector establishes a holding company or investment fund dedicated to support a faculty startup, that proactive effort be made to attract passive professors to the startup world, and that private companies join faculty startups in the process of concept proofing and product commercialization. The study is expected to provide government, university, and industry with practical implication in promoting faculty startup.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.53-63
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• 2017

With increasing the importance of venture startup in the national economy, a trend shows that the government's policy support for venture startup is not only strengthened, but also entrepreneurial enthusiasm is increasing. In order for this trend to continue as an ongoing phenomenon, not a temporary phenomenon, venture startups should continue to grow with survival competitiveness. In this respect, there is a time when it is necessary to study the factors affecting the success of venture startups more than ever. There is a limit to seeing main factors, which affect the entry into the growth stage with survival competitiveness for the success of venture startups, as only 'entrepreneur capacity' and 'differentiation strategy' claimed by existing previous studies. As a more fundamental factor, entrepreneurial behavior is important in terms of opportunity discovery and opportunity utilization, but research into this falls short of expectations. This study is intended to look into success factors of venture startup. To achieve this, a survey was empirically carried out to CEOs in 100 small and medium venture startups through AHP analysis. The results are as follows. As stated above, entrepreneurship of success factors in venture startups is considered most critical, followed by innovation, economics, and technology. And 'entrepreneur's competency', 'positive entrepreneurial motivation', 'creative technology utilization', and 'continuous investment in technical development' are considered most critical for 'entrepreneurship', 'innovation', 'technology', and 'economics' as sub-factors, respectively. Consequently, entrepreneur's entrepreneurship that has been required in general startups is a critical factor to be also in common required in venture startups. This means that they can secure the competitiveness of venture startup along with continuous investment support in business startup with a positive mindset and their own technological competence as innovators to overcome the risk and uncertainty of business startup as entrepreneurship that marks the start of a new enterprise.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.63-79
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• 2024

The startup ecosystem is experiencing a paradigm shift in founding due to the acceleration of digital transformation, online platform companies have grown significantly into unicorns, but the lack of differentiated approaches and strategic support for deep tech startups has led to the inactivity of the startup ecosystem. is lacking. Therefore, in this study, we proposed ways to develop domestic startup development policies, focusing on the US system, which is an advanced example overseas. Focusing on the definition and characteristics of deep tech startups, current investment status, success stories, support policies, etc., we comprehensively analyzed domestic and international literature and derived suggestions. In particular, he proposed specific ways to improve support policies for domestic deep tech startups and presented milestones for their development. Currently, the United States is significantly strengthening the role of the government in supporting deep tech startups. The US government provides direct financial support to deep tech startups, including detergent support and infrastructure support. It has also established policies to foster deep tech startups, established related institutions, and systematized support. It is worth noting that US universities play a core role in nurturing deep tech startups. Leading universities in the United States operate deep tech startup discovery and development programs, providing research and development infrastructure and technology. It also works with companies to provide co-investment and commercialization support for deep tech startups. As a result, the growth of domestic deep tech startups requires the cooperation of diverse entities such as the government, universities, companies, and private investors. The government should strengthen policy support, and universities and businesses should work together to support R&D and commercialization capabilities. Furthermore, private investors must stimulate investment in deep tech startups. Through such efforts, deep tech startups are expected to grow and Korea's innovation ecosystem will be revitalized.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.47-61
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• 2014

Many angel investors hesitate to invest in early-stage company. Most early-stage company has no sales and only R&D step project or in early approach of market. So it's impossible to evaluate early-stage company quantitatively. Therefore many angel investors depend on CEO's tendency to evaluate company and make decision for investment. The purpose of this study is discover the entrepreneurial characteristics of CEO and the importance level which affect on the angel investors decision making factors for investment. To identify the factors of entrepreneurial characteristics, survey was conducted by Delphi Technique which is involved by 20 experts who is angel investment club members, venture capitalists, CEOs and officers. Three rounds of survey results derived 10 elements of entrepreneurial characteristics for investment decision making factors including reliability, risk sensitivity, passion, perseverance, integrity, leadership, startup experience, organizational management skills, innovation and social networking. In addition, this study derived the importance level of elements of entrepreneurial characteristics based on the AHP(Analytic Hierarchy Process) theory and maintained the logical consistency by pair-wise comparison for each element. As a result of analyzing the importance of entrepreneurial characteristics, the sequence is reliability (18.1%), integrity (15.9%), leadership (11.7%), organizational management skills (10.0%), social networking (9.5%), passion(9.1%), perseverance(8.4%), innovation(8.1%), startup experience(5.3%) and risk sensitivity(3.9%) respectively. The significance of this study is somewhat decrease limit of the uncertainty arising from angel investors and angel investors can help a decision making, by discover factors of entrepreneurial characteristics that can be called the biggest influencing factors among Investor's investment decision-making In early stage companies and compare importance.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.47-57
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to grasp the correlation between network and firm's performance by analyzing the perception and characteristics of network of business founder and investor from the perspective of the network. We selected a TIPS support program which is evaluated to be a best practice as a research target for empirical analysis. The empirical results using social network and statistical analysis, shows that the stronger the investor's network connectivity, the more likely it is that the investor's start - up succeeds in attracting subsequent investment. In addition, both the entrepreneurial team and the management think that the internal human network between the enterprise and the investor plays an important role in inducing investment or exploring the company, and recognizes that the value of the human network will have a significant influence on the enterprise value evaluation or investment decision.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.101-114
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• 2022

Recently, various studies on the entrepreneurial ecosystem have been conducted. The entrepreneurial ecosystem is composed of various elements such as entrepreneurs, governments, and infrastructure, and these factors interact to contribute to economic development. The purpose of this study was to analyze differences in importance and performance of the entrepreneurial ecosystem for startups using the importance-performance analysis (IPA) method. Based on this, the importance and current level of the components of the entrepreneurial ecosystem were identified and policy implications were presented. The results of the study are as follows. The importance ranking was in the order of startup support program(4.43), startup funding (4.39), market accessibility(4.30). The ranking of performance was startup support program(3.81), ease of starting a business(3.76), support for startup support institutions(3.66), and startup funding(3.66). All elements of the entrepreneurial ecosystem showed higher importance than performance. This means that the components of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Korea are recognized as important, but do not play a significant role in terms of performance for startups. In addition, the factors with the highest improvement in the importance-performance matrix were 「safety nets for startup failure」, 「culture of acceptance of failure」, 「ease of market entry」, 「ease of startup survival」, and 「ease of exit」. This study suggested improvement measures such as establishing a social safety net, improving awareness of startup failure culture, matching successful startups, strengthening scale-up support by growth stage, easing regulations in new business fields, and diversifying investment recovery strategies.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.125-135
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• 2016

It is well known that the encouraging startups play a major role for innovation in an economy. Thus, venture capital are indispensable for the growth of startups. The literature on investment performance of venture capital reveals that the investment strategies depend largely on the characteristics and capabilities of venture capital. Therefore, investment capability of venture capital is important. There are various investing roles that can be identified by venture capital when determining what kind of startup to invest in, whom to invest with, how to invest, how to post-investment management after investment, and so on. This research was conducted to understand the effect of investment capabilities of venture capital on investment performance. To do so, we surveyed 70 venture businesses in the Seoul and Gyeonggido region for an empirical analysis. The empirical results of this paper are summarized as follows. First, the financial performance of venture firms is influenced by the financial capacity of venture capitalists, and investment evaluation of venture capital. Second, the business performance of venture firms is influenced by the marketing support consulting of venture capital, and investment evaluation of venture capital.

• Asian Journal of Innovation and Policy
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.131-149
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• 2018

Multinational corporations (MNCs) leverage global locations for efficient production and sustained growth, and move significant foreign direct investments globally, particularly into emerging economies. MNCs also engage in entrepreneurial ecosystems of host countries for strategic benefits and impact the ecosystem as well. Of late, MNCs are increasingly entering into emerging economies like India through foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and they are playing a vital role in start-up promotion in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Therefore, we examine the role of MNCs and its impact on the entrepreneurial ecosystems in India by exploring a symbiotic relationship between MNCs and startups. We use a case-based method to ascertain and analyze specific benefits that emerge from such symbiotic relationships and draw implications for startups in India's technology entrepreneurial ecosystem.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.47-65
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• 2020

With the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution in sight, innovative business models utilizing new technologies are emerging, and startups are enjoying an abundance of opportunities based on the agility to respond to disruptive innovations and the opening to new technologies. However, what is most important in creating a sustainable start-up ecosystem is not the start-up itself, but the process of research-start-investment-investment-the leap to listing and big business-in order to build a virtuous circle of startups that leads to re-investment. To this end, the environment created in the hub area where start-ups were conducted is important, and these material and non-material environmental factors are described as being inclusive by the word "entrepreneurial ecosystem." This study aims to provide implications for Korea's entrepreneurial ecosystem through the study of the interaction of the elements that make up the start-up ecosystem and the relationship of ecosystem participants in Singapore. Singapore has been consistently mentioned as the top two Asian countries in assessing the start-up environment and business environment. In this process, six elements of the entrepreneurial ecosystem presented by Isenberg(2010)-policies, finance, culture, support, human resources, and market-are the best frameworks for analyzing entrepreneurial ecosystems in terms of well encompassing prior studies related to entrepreneurial ecosystem elements, and a model of regional transformation is formed focusing on some elements to suit Singapore, the target area of study. By considering that Singapore's political nature would inevitably have a huge impact on finance, Smart Nation policy was having an impact on university education related to entrepreneurship, and that the entrepreneurial networks and global connectivity formed within Singapore's start-up infrastructure had a significant impact on Singapore's start-up's performance, researches needed to look more at the factors of policy, culture and market. In addition, qualitative research of participants in the entrepreneurial ecosystem was essential to understand the internal interaction of the elements of the start-up ecosystem, so the semi-structured survey was conducted by visiting the site. As such, this study examined the status of the local entrepreneurial ecosystem based on qualitative research focused on policies, culture and market elements of Singapore's start-up ecosystem, and intended to provide implications for regulations related to start-ups, the role of universities and start-up infrastructure through comparison with Korea. This could contribute not only to the future research of the start-up ecosystem, but also to the creation of a start-up infrastructure, boosting the start-up ecosystem, and the establishment of the orientation of the start-up education in universities.