• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.29-43
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• 2016

The Lean Startup, a methodology for minimizing failure rate of startups, has been receiving attention since its publication in 2011. Although it has been receiving enormous attention as an effective methodology of startups' growth and the emergence of unicorn companies, it is undeniable that the theoretical research and cases on this topic have not been fully accumulated in Korea. Progress of management theory has been made when combining the theory and case studies. In this paper, we thus excavated the 'Cardoc' case, which has applied the lean startup concept to the entire process of service and customer development from the inception of its product design. The following are the findings of the case. First, for the successful application of lean startup, it is essential that all team members to understand the lean startup concept and are willing to apply it thoroughly to the business management. Second, the prompt launching of MVP(Minimum Viable Product) is more important than table discussion. Third, it is crucial to select the appropriate key metrics and analytic tools for effective learning. Fourth, startup must scale up promptly as soon as it verifies the product-market fit through the BML(Build-Measure-Learn) iteration cycle. Fifth, all new business expansion should be lean. Cardoc is currently testing new MVPs in order to move onto the next scale-up process with huge investments in newly added segments. This study is meaningful in that it elaborates the representative case of a Korean startup that has applied the lean startup strategy under the circumstance of insufficient discussion of Korean startup cases in comparison with growing attention both in concept development and case accumulation abroad. We hope that this paper can be a stepping stone for future relevant research on the implementation of lean startup methodology in Korea.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.41-54
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to find out how the support system of the government and the local governments for enhancing the success rate of the startup firms affected the performance of the enterprises according to the behavior characteristics of the founders. It is divided entrepreneurial support system into entrepreneurial policy support such as entrepreneurial education, mentoring and consulting, and funding of startup support such as policy fund and R & D fund, distinguished the behavior of founder into behaviors for discovery of entrepreneurial opportunities and behaviors for exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities. In order to analyze whether it affects the corporate management performance, a research model was created based on the previous research and hypotheses were set up, and the hypotheses were verified based on this questionnaire. The results of this study are as follows: First, it is found that the support for entrepreneurial policy has a positive effect on the behavior characteristics of entrepreneur. Second, it is found that the startup support such as policy fund affects the behavioral characteristics for finding the opportunity of the founder, but it does not affect the behavioral characteristics for the opportunity exploit. Third, it was found that the behavior characteristics of entrepreneur founding opportunity and exploition of entrepreneurial opportunity influenced the performance of the company. According to the this study, the following conclusion were obtained, First, it is necessary to apply different policies according to the stage of growth of startup companies. Second, startup companies grow through the stages of development of new technologies and ideas, commercialization, and marketing, at each stage, entrepreneur must overcome the so-called Death Valley, which requires funding.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.35-48
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• 2018

This study aims to assess the training effect of QFD(Quality Functional Deployment) program for 3 years over startups, adopted from the conventional QFD widely used in the large companies to break up to a sluggish sales and growth, for employees working in startup whether the participants in startup and venture company taking this lessons into their real tasks or not. In particular, the focus of this study falls on figuring out whether individual characteristics of the participants play a role in moderating effect over transfer intension factors and its link path structure. The research results drive out two significant findings. First, in terms of relationship between the influence of transfer intension by self-efficacy and the validity of training content with the learner's readiness, the moderating effect of demographic features of the participants is effective partially by the sex and fully by their working position, but not statistically significant by age, education, and the prior startup career. This research deliver the following significant implication that the active participation of CEO level, decision-maker guarantee the higher performance of the training program like QFD program, more stresses falling on practical implementation in real business rather than just ending up with career training. This study gives significant policy implication to quasi-government organization running all public startup training projects.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.1-11
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• 2019

Financing plays an important role in the survival and growth of startups. This study investigates key factors that improve startup financing performance. To this end, we analyze the relationship between the proportion of intellectual property and the financing performance. In addition, this study also examine the impact of the founder's education level on the financing of startups, and the moderating effect of the founder's education level on the relationship between intellectual property proportion and financing. Based on the survey data of 331 startups, this study found that the proportion of intellectual property and the financing performance have an inverted U-shaped nonlinear relationship. While the founder's education level has a positive impact on the financing performance, it negatively moderate the relationship between the intellectual property proportion and the financing performance. Through these findings, this study suggests that it is necessary to maintain an adequate proportion of intellectual property in order to maximize startup financing performance. The higher education level of founder enhances the startup financing. Since the founder's education level weaken the effect of intellectual proporty's effect on startup financing, however, startups need to control the proportion of intellectual property to improving financing according to the founder's education level. Based on signal theory, this study proposes a new strategy of intellectual property to enhance startup financing performance.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.15-25
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• 2018

As jobless growth became the new norm and the average life expectancy continues to increase, it is difficult to find quality jobs regardless of gender. In this situation, entrepreneurs who can take charge of creating quality jobs have begun to gain attention from governments. As a result, many startup support programs have been introduced and operated. In Korea, various government-sponsored startup support programs have been in operation since the late 2000s, and the number of startups has increased since. However, there are many cases where they are not able to maintain their business for a long time because such programs often lack expertise and experience. Mentoring programs for startup founders is becoming an attractive solution to these problems. However, when we look at the responses of entrepreneurs, they found the mentoring program beneficial only when it was well planned and operated. Otherwise, they found the program unhelpful. Although there are many startup mentoring programs in various fields, there is little research on whether customized mentoring that matches the characteristics of startups and entrepreneurs are effective. In this study, we study the effects of startup mentoring on mentoring satisfaction. Our model also intends to identify the moderating effects of entrepreneurs' characteristics and provide guidance to future startup mentoring.

• 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.16 no.2
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• pp.19-34
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• 2021

The government budget for promoting startup have been skyrocketed as catching up with increasing demands for high-tech startup by disruptive innovation resulted from rapid technology change. However, major trend of startup have still fallen on self-employed type of startup due to the lack of expertise and fund in spite of desperate government policy efforts. In reality, the access to high-tech startup has been very limited and too high huddle to would-be entrepreneur. This paper implement empirical analysis on the effects of entrepreneur competency and satisfaction level to government support, considering these as the KSF for the growth and success of high-tech startup, to the performance of the company. In particular, it focus on defining unique characteristics of high-tech startup through differential proving by the backgrounds of entrepreneur such as major, R&D experience, patent possession, CTO possession. This research carry out survey to 217 entrepreneurs in high-tech company in Daejon and Daegue at R&D Special Innopolis Zone. Research results are as follow. First, entrepreneurial achievement competencies, conceptualization competencies, network competencies and market recognition competencies positively affect the financial and non-financial performance and organizational and technical competencies, while organizational and technological competencies only positively impact on non-financial performance. Second, the satisfaction level of government support showed a positive moderating effect on entrepreneurial achievement competencies and financial performance, while no significant effect in other competencies. Third, positive differential effect by the technological background of entrepreneur such as Major, R&D experience, patent possession, CTO possession) have been confirmed. This paper deliver several significant implications and contributions, First, it propose classified and systematized entrepreneur competency through the domestic and foreign literature reviews. Second, it proves the need for the wider spread of team based startup culture rather then sole startup. Third, it also proves the important role of technological background of entrepreneur among the characteristics of high-tech startup.