• Korean small business review
• /
• v.43 no.1
• /
• pp.187-219
• /
• 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
• /
• v.15 no.5
• /
• pp.13-35
• /
• 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.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.17 no.5
• /
• pp.1-16
• /
• 2022

Although start-up is a key national strategy to increase national competitiveness and create employment, the survival rate of start-ups has not improved significantly. This is an important reason for the inability to provide timely and appropriate support to startups, which are in the early stages of start-up, due to the unique limitations of existing start-up support institutions and investors. The relatively recent accelerator is attracting attention as a subject of solving the above problems through professional incubation and investment. However, there are only a few empirical studies on investment determinants that affect the survival and success of accelerators, and there is a lack of theoretical evidence. Accordingly, in previous studies, 12 investment determinants were derived from a static, strategic, and dynamic perspective as accelerator investment determinants based on a business model innovation framework. This study subdivided the accelerator investment determinants derived through previous studies into 21 and analyzed the importance and priority of each factor using AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) analysis technique for domestic accelerator investment experts. As a result of the analysis, the top factors of importance of accelerator investment determinants were in the order of 'human resources', 'customer and market', 'intellectual resources', and 'entrepreneur's ability to realize opportunities'. It can be seen that the accelerator considers the core competencies of startups to implement solutions as the most important factor when making startup investment decisions. It was also confirmed that accelerators are strategic to create a clear value proposition and differentiated market position based on the core competitiveness of startups, and that the core value delivery method prefers a market-oriented business model and recognizes entrepreneurs's innovation capability is an important factor to realize a business model with limited resources in a rapidly changing market. This study is of academic significance in that it analyzes the importance and priority of accelerator investment determinants through demonstration as a follow-up study on accelerator investment determinants derived based on business model innovation theory that reflects the nature, goals, and major activities of accelerator investment. In addition, it is of practical value as it contributes to revitalizing the domestic startup investment ecosystem by providing accelerators with theoretical grounds for investment decisions and specific information on detailed investment determinants.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.15 no.6
• /
• pp.27-42
• /
• 2020

Startup accelerators have emerged as new investment entities that help early startups, which are not easy to survive continuously due to lack of funds, commercialization capabilities, and experiences. As their positive performance on early startups and the ecosystem has been proven, the number of early startups which want to receive their investment is also increasing. However, they are vaguely preparing to attract accelerators' investment because they do not have any information on what factors the accelerators consider important. In addition, researches on startup accelerators are also at an early level, so there are no remarkable prior studies on factors that decide on investment. Therefore, this study aims to help startups prepare for investment attraction by looking at what factors are important for accelerators to invest, and to provide meaningful implications to academia. In the preceding study, we derived five upper level categories, 26 lower level accelerators' investment determinants through the qualitative meta-synthesis method, secondary data analysis, observation on US accelerators and in-depth interviews. In this study, we want to derive important implications by deriving priorities of the accelerators' investment determinants. Therefore, we used AHP that are evaluated as the suitable methodology for deriving importance and priority. The analysis results show that accelerators value market-related factors most. This means that startups that are subject to investment by accelerators are early-stage startups, and many companies have not fully developed their products or services. Therefore, market-related factors that can be evaluated objectively seem to be more important than products (or services) that are still ambiguous. Next, it was found that the factors related to the internal workforce of startups are more important. Since accelerators want to develop their businesses together with start-ups and team members through mentoring, ease of collaboration with them is very important, which seems to be important. The overall priority analysis results of the 26 investment determinants show that 'customer needs' and 'founders and team members' understanding of customers and markets' (0.62) are important and high priority factors. The results also show that startup accelerators consider the customer-centered perspective very important. And among the factors related to startups, the most prominent factor was the founder's openness and execution ability. Therefore, it can be confirmed that accelerators consider the ease of collaboration with these startups very important.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.65-80
• /
• 2022

Despite the uncertainty and risky factors of startups, the special and critical role of accelerators in carrying out professional nurturing and investment for them is becoming increasingly significant in the startup social-system. However, academic research on investment determinants that have a profound impact on the survival of accelerators is lacking, and there are only a few empirical studies on the classification and importance of factors, and they do not enjoy the benefits of theoretical studies. This study proposes a business model innovation framework based on the business model innovation theory that reflects the nature and properties of startups that are investment targets of accelerators and derives 12 investment decision factors. The framework defines that the target, direction, and performable force of startup innovation are a business model, strategy, and dynamic capability. Besides, the framework analyzes the investment decision factors of the existing accelerators based on the business model innovation framework to verify the suitability and sufficiency of the composition. As a result of the analysis, first, most of the items were faithfully composed from a static point of view of business model innovation, but it was found that the factors related to the core activities to evaluate the activity and customer relationship were insufficient. Second, from the strategic point of view, the necessity of developing factors that can encompass the definition and content of core resources, which are internal strategic factors, was raised. Third, from the dynamic point of view, it was found that many of the investment determinants of accelerators were concentrated on the lower level of dynamic competencies. This can be judged as a result of reflecting the characteristics of a startup that needs to develop a solution with few resources and a small number of team members. In addition, the roles and interrelationships between each factor are not clear, thus it was found as a limiting point for startups to view and evaluate the direction and process in which startups dynamically innovate their business models. This study is considerably differentiated in that it provides a business model innovation framework and offers a theoretical basis for investment determinants by deriving the investment determinants of accelerators based on the framework and design the foundation for subsequent research. The business model innovation framework presented in this study has great implications in that it contributes to the achievement of startups, accelerators, and startup support organizations.