• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.127-140
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• 2022

Recently, accelerators are attracting attention as a new startup incubator. This study empirically analyzed the relative importance and priority of decision-making factors when a startup selects an accelerator using the AHP technique. As a result, startup founders recognized the importance of decision-making factors in the order of funding factors, program factors, and accelerator characteristic factors. there was a difference in the relative importance of detailed factors between startup founders and accelerator workers, depending on the location of the business site and the presence or absence of sales performance. This suggests that accelerators need to strengthen the financial support capabilities and improve customized services to meet the needs of startups. This study can be used as a decision-making criterion when a startup selects an accelerator, and can be used as basic data for additional research on the accelerator program.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.95-114
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• 2023

As the Fourth Industrial Revolution progresses, the importance of startups is becoming more prominent. Additionally, the role of accelerators in ensuring the sustainability of startups is also being emphasized. Therefore, in this study, among the services provided by accelerators to startups, the mentoring service, education service, funding service, and networking service tried to empirically analyze the structural relationship that affects startup performance through the dynamic capabilities of start-ups. To achieve this, we conducted a survey in February 2023 targeting startup CEOs and executives who had experience with accelerator program services. A total of 238 valid responses were analyzed using structural equation modeling with Amos 24. The results of the empirical analysis were as follows. The accelerator program services, including mentoring, education, funding, and networking services, had a significant positive effect on startup dynamic capabilities. Among the accelerator program sub-factors, networking services had the highest impact on startup dynamic capabilities, followed by mentoring, funding, and education services. Furthermore, startup dynamic capabilities were found to have a significant positive effect on startup performance. On the other hand, startup dynamic capabilities were found to mediate the relationship between mentoring, education, funding, networking services, and startup performance. Dynamic capabilities are a critical factor for startups, and the finding that accelerator programs can have a significant impact on startup performance by mediating these dynamic capabilities is significant both academically and practically.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.33-46
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• 2019

Even though Korea is strengthening the support for startups due to the limitations of growth policies focusing on large companies, the survival rate of startups is very low, so that there should be more efforts to increase the survival rate of startups. As the existing startup support institutions have provided only fragmentary supports to startups, it would be necessary to have the comprehensive support institutions. As an alternative, the accelerator providing the comprehensive support such as spatial support, education, mentoring, networking, seed investment, and connection for follow-up investment to the initial startups was legalized in Korea of 2016, based on the registration system. Currently, within less than two year from then, there have been much interest in it enough to have about 136 registered accelerators. In the United States, the accelerator was introduced more than ten years ago. In Korea, however, it is still in the initial stage, so that the researches or social consensus on the accelerator are not sufficient. Thus, this study aims to suggest the measures for the development of accelerator and the consensus on the decision making for the selection of accelerator of startups, by researching which parts are considered when startups in the accelerator stage select the accelerator. As a result of the empirical analysis, the factor that has the greatest influence on decision making factors when startup chooses an accelerator was the subsequent investment attraction. This can be explained to the accelerator as desired, considering the factor that the startup of the initial stage places the most importance on growth as investment. We hope that these research results will be sustainable in future research related to accelerators, in hopes that it will be useful for establishing accelerator policies for domestic startups and direction for revitalizing related industries.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.129-141
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• 2019

Currently, there is a wave of second startup companies in Korea as well as within the global market, and the role of accelerators have become highly important at the center of changes. In the early 2000s, Y-Combinator has made Airbnb and Dropbox grow into a global company, and its start-up support model has begun to gain worldwide attention, and further became the beginning of the "accelerator" industry. The accelerator industry has been expanding rapidly throughout the United States, Britain and Israel, as well as China and Southeast Asia in recent years. As of the end of 2018, more than 130 accelerators have been operating in Korea, starting with Primer in 2010, and the scope of its activities has been expanding into specialty fields such as Pintech, bio industry, and Block chain, as well as Game. The purpose of this study is to study the role of the accelerator through the phenomenon of these accelerators and their step-by-step support services.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.1-18
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• 2022

There is growing empirical evidence that passion is an important part of entrepreneurship and influences the intentions, behaviors and performance of entrepreneurs, employees and startups. Passion is especially important in an entrepreneurial context, given the effort and challenge that entrepreneurs starting a startup must overcome. The purpose of this study was to confirm the effect of the passion of startup entrepreneurs participating in the accelerator incubation program and the passion of accelerator entrepreneurs and managers on the entrepreneurial performance of incubator startups. In addition, we tried to confirm whether entrepreneurial self-efficacy plays a mediating role in this influence relationship. The survey was conducted online by startups entrepreneur who completed the accelerator incubation program. A total of 330 questionnaires were used for the analysis. As a result of the empirical analysis, it was confirmed that the passion of startup entrepreneurs and the passion of accelerator entrepreneurs and managers all had a positive (+) effect on the entrepreneurial performance of incubator startups. The influence of passion was found to be high in the order of startup entrepreneurs, accelerator entrepreneurs, and accelerator managers. It was confirmed that entrepreneurial self-efficacy plays a mediating role between the passion of startup entrepreneurs, the passion of accelerator entrepreneurs, and the entrepreneurial performance of incubator startups, respectively. However, no significant mediating role was identified between the passion of accelerator managers and the entrepreneurial performance of incubator startups. This study is significant in empirically confirming for the first time that the passion of accelerator entrepreneurs and managers has a positive effect on the entrepreneurial performance of incubator startups. The passion of accelerator entrepreneurs and managers is playing an important role as a hidden lynchpin in creating the entrepreneurial performance of incubator startups. In particular, since the passion of accelerator entrepreneurs has a great influence on the performance of incubator startups, it is necessary to recognize this fact and carefully examine their passion reputation when startups select accelerators.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.13-35
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• 2020

Startup accelerators are a new type of investors providing a certain amount of shares for imparting education, mentoring, networking, and providing space and seed money that can directly resolve the difficulties faced by nascent entrepreneurs (Clarysse, 2016). Startup accelerators have expanded worldwide as their influence over the startup ecosystem has increasingly been established (Pauwels et al., 2016; Cohen & Hochberg, 2014). This study was conducted to derive investment determinants of startup accelerators that are emerging as major investment players around the world. To this end, the accelerator-type determinants of investment were derived. As previous research on this topic is nonexistent, this process involved qualitative meta-synthesis, literature reviews, observation, and in-depth interviews. First, more than 30 research papers were examined for the determinants of investment for firms at an early stage of their foundation, and the categories and determinants of investment in the relevant studies were comparatively analyzed using qualitative meta-synthesis. Further, related data were investigated to identify the characteristics of accelerators, and the startup evaluation process of US accelerators was studied. The more than 100 questions raised during this process were coded to examine the determinants of investment that accelerators considered important. In-depth interviews were conducted with four US accelerators to identify the characteristics of accelerators and key determinants of investment. Ultimately, 5 categories of accelerator-type determinants of investment and 26 subordinate determinants of investment were derived. The results were verified and supplemented by consulting with seven accelerators in Korea. The results were confirmed after pilot tests and verification by seven domestic accelerators. After confirming the accelerator-type determinants, the reliability of them was verified by examining the importance and priority of each category through the quantitative survey of Korean accelerators. The research that elicited the accelerator-type investment determinants is the first research and is expected to be a major reference to the progress of subsequent studies. This research that systematically derived the investment determinants of the accelerator is expected to make major contributions to the progress of follow-up studies, the process of selecting startups, and the investment decision-making process of the accelerators.

• Korean small business review
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.187-219
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• 2021

Startup accelerators, a new type of investment entity, have emerged as a way to solve the difficulties of early startups and existing investment methods with high risk. With the visible performances of these startup accelerators on the success of startups, medium and large accelerator companies have emerged, along with the increasing size of seed money they invest in. In addition, differences between small and medium&large accelerator companies are emerging. Therefore, startups need informations on what factors to prepare for attracting startup accelerators' investment. Accelerators also need determinant criteria to select startups as the amount of investment grows. However, the study on this subject is not currently being conducted. Therefore, we conducted the study through dividing the average amount of seed money into small and medium & large-sized investment groups and examined the differences in major investment determinants, investment purposes, and major accelerating programs. As the results of this study, small investment groups could be subdivided into 'consulting-oriented accelerators' and medium- and large-sized investment groups into 'investment-oriented accelerators'. In addition, major services and investment purposes and investment decision criteria vary depending on the size of the investment. I think these findings will be good standards for accelerator companies, startups in need of their help, and follow-up researchers.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.131-154
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• 2018

While strong investments on startup and venture ecosystem prosper worldwide, growing interest on nurturing startup ecosystem in Korea is also on its way. However, korean entrepreneurial ecosystem currently results few successful business models with those continuous development of itself compared to the one in China, which is breeding more than 50% of unicorns internationally. Accordingly, this study examined how people in the venture ecosystem, especially in IT industry feel about themselves and startup itself and compared startup ecosystem in Seoul, Korea to the one in Chengdu, China considering each of economic, social and administrational environment. The study tried to provide an implication about the future orientation of Korea's starup and venture ecosystem to policy makers and the ones inside the environment to make a better one. Therefore, the study choose Seoul, Korea and Chengdu, China as geological specimens of startup ecosystem and conduct qualitative study by interviewing selected ones who work in startup incubator, accelerator specified to IT industry and started their own business in IT industry funded by startup reward program. The study categorize the result in social, economic, and administrative parts and screens whether the interviewees from both Korea and China have similar opinions toward each of questions and can be translated to have tendency or not in each part of study. According to the study, the national recognition of startup should be moved from means of maintenance such as restaurants, franchise business to IT startup especially based on software business for the sustainable flourish in Korean venture ecosystem. Investors including accelerator, Angel investors and VCs should be less risk-aversion and therefore prefer stake purchase to solely giving subsidies. The role of governors should be limited to be a middleman of the network, connecting each people in need inside the ecosystem and their reward program should focus on nurturing the growing ones, not just multiplying the numbers of startups to expand the size of entrepreneurial ecosystem. Since this study indicated that entire revision of startup ecosystem should be applied to make a better one, it could be used to design future entrepreneurial infrastructure and the ways of activating startup ecosystem elsewhere in Korea.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.141-156
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• 2023

The advancement of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), along with the expansion of government and private investment in startup discovery and funding, has led to the emergence of startups seeking to generate outstanding results based on innovative ideas. As successful startups serve as role models, the number of aspiring entrepreneurs preparing to launch their own startups continues to increase. However, unlike entrepreneurs who challenge themselves with serial entrepreneurship after experiencing success, early-stage startups face various challenges such as team building, technology development, and fundraising. Accelerators play a dual role of mentor and investor by providing education, mentoring, consulting, network connection, and initial investment activities to help startups overcome various challenges they face and facilitate their growth. This study investigated whether there is a correlation between the characteristics of startups and their entrepreneurial performance, and analyzed whether accelerators mediate the relationship between startup characteristics and entrepreneurial performance. A total of 11 hypotheses were proposed, and a survey was conducted on 302 startup founders and employees located across the country, including the metropolitan area, for empirical research. SPSS 23.0 and Amos 23.0 were used for statistical analysis. Through this study, it was found that factors such as innovation, organizational culture, financial characteristics, and learning orientation among the characteristics of startups, rather than having a direct impact on entrepreneurial performance, are linked to entrepreneurial performance through the role of accelerators. By analyzing the impact factors of startup characteristics on entrepreneurial performance, this study presents research on the role of accelerators and provides institutional improvements. It is expected to contribute to the expansion of investment and differentiated acceleration programs, enabling startups to seize the market and grow stably in the market.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.31-44
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• 2020

Accelerators that invest in early startups, as well as nursery and overall management, have recently emerged as "key players" in the startup ecosystem. This can be proved by the case where the number of domestic accelerators registered in the Korean Ministry of SMEs and Startups has recently reached 208. Accelerators provide the necessary education for early-stage companies, including guidance for a certain period of time, and support startups in ways such as demo days to attract subsequent investment after the seed investment. There is not much research in academia about what factors impact on these accelerators when making investment decisions at the time of seed investment. In this study, we checked the meaning and function of the accelerator and tried to analyze what factors affect on accelerators when making a decision to invest in startups. The research method is based on a literature survey of previous studies on investment decision-making factors of venture capital and angel investors, and a lens model and judgment analysis method through empirical research targeting 43 accelerator investment decision-makers. Empirical analysis shows that accelerators have three of the key factors to consider when choosing the first startup to invest and educate; entrepreneurs' entrepreneurial traits, their product and service expertise and a potential return on success. This will provide an opportunity for early startups to gain strategic access to accelerators when they need money or need a structured educational program. Also, the results obtained through this research will be a kind of guideline for startups to attract accelerators' investment. The significance of this study is that discriminatory evidence was presented on the accelerator determinants of investment, and it would be highly suggestive to startups and related public institutions.