• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.101-120
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• 2021

Purpose - As the research of Chinese unicorn companies is still in early stages, this paper aims to investigate the factors that influence the success of Chinese IT unicorns. Design/methodology/approach - This study is conducted as a single case study and used various sources such as interviews, internal data, press releases, IR data, etc. to enhance the reliability and validity. Findings - First, the characteristics of the start-up team, social capital, and strategies as internal factors affect the success of unicorns. Among them, the more Guanxi in social capital factors, the greater the possibility of growing into an IT unicorn company. Second, the role of venture capital and geographical location have been identified that two factors affect the success of unicorns. In the role of venture capital, it has been confirmed that the world's top-level venture capital company or a company that has been invested by "BATJ" is more likely to grow into a unicorn company in China. Research implications or Originality - This paper distinguishes between internal and external factors to explain the factors that affect the growth of unicorn companies, which lays the foundation for future research, such as the exploration of the unicorns and the development of new variables.

• Korean small business review
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.165-186
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• 2021

Startups are undergoing a change throughout the growth process of startups that appear in existing studies as they move away from the existing B2B or B2C frame and expand their target customer groups to O2O, C2C. In this regard, a new type of startup known as unicorns, a unicorn which has grown rapidly in a short period of time, is being created by successfully attracting government support and external investment in recognition of the potential value of the startup. This study examined the relationship between investment attraction and growth after founding for five representative unicorns in the U.S. and Korea. As a result, it was found that private investment in Korea is passive and defensive, and is attracted after the Series A stage, compared to the U.S., where the growth potential of the startup ecosystem is positively evaluated. In addition, it found that government's support policy throughout the startup's growth process is an abstract and comprehensive policy focusing on initial funding for startups. Therefore, it was suggested that the scope of government policies should be expanded to forster startups as unicorns, and that it is necessary to establish and implement differentiated support policies for each growth of the scale-up of startups. This study is significant in that it presented the criteria for the growth stage and support of startups as well as policy support for scale-up through practical case analysis of unicorns.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.63-77
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• 2022

The importance of start-ups and venture companies in the Korean economy is growing. However, the successful growth of startups and venture companies are still challenging as 70% of startups fail within 5 years. A new perspective on innovation is essential to overcome the liability of newness and the liability of smallness in the existing market and obtain the competitive advantage. Recent phenomenon in the Korean startups ecosystem is the remarkable growth of unicorns and future unicorns. Their business models, types of business, and success cases serve as a good example. Neverthless, the process of unicorn and future unicorn startups making new industries and innovative business has poorly understood. In this paper, we first define 175 unicorns and future unicorn startups participating in the K-unicorn project as a unicorn group and analyze current trends of the group. Then the in-depth analyses of industry sectors are conducted. Specifically, focusing on the unicorn forming the new market, we examine the unicorn making the processes of industry category innovation through the business innovation model. Lastly, broadening the scope of the analysis to the unicorn group, policy implications in startups and venture ecosystem are suggested.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.173-188
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• 2023

This paper analyzed the Earnings management of firms selected as preliminary Unicorn. If a manager is selected as a preliminary unicorn firm, he can receive financial support of up to 20 billion won, creating a factor in managing the manager's earnings. The motive for management's earnings management is related to the capital market. Accounting information is used by investors and financial analysts, and corporate profits affect corporate value. Therefore, if the accounting earning is adjusted upward, the corporate value will be raised and investment conditions will be favorable. In this paper, earnings quality was measured by the modified Jones model of Dechow et al.(1995) by the ROA control model of Kothari et al.(2005) among the discretionary accruals estimated using an alternative accrual prediction model. Competing similar companies in the same market as the selected companies were formed, and the discretionary accruals were mutually compared to verify the research hypotheses, and only the selected companies were analyzed for the audit year and after the audit year. As a result of the analysis, it was found that the companies selected as preliminary unicorns had higher earnings management compared to the corresponding companies in question, which had a negative impact on the quality of accounting profits. It was found that the companies selected as preliminary unicorns continued to receive incentives for management's earnings management even after being selected. These results indicate that the companies selected as prospective unicorns are recognized for their value in the market through external growth rather than internal growth, and thus, incentives for management's earnings management to attract investment from external investors under favorable conditions are continuing. In the future preliminary unicorn selection evaluation, it was possible to present what needs to be reviewed on the quality of accounting earning. The implication of this paper is that the factors of management's earnings management eventually hinder investors and creditors from judging the reliability of accounting information. It was suggested that a policy alternative for the K-Unicorn Project, which enhances reliability were presented by reflecting the evaluation of earnings quality through discretionary accruals.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.55-73
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• 2024

Unicorn companies are attracting attention around the world as they are recognized for their high corporate value in a short period of time as an innovative business models. Their growth process presents good lessons for the startup ecosystem and have a positive impact on national economic development and job creation. However, previous studies related to unicorn companies are focused on 'event studies' and 'case studies' such as characteristics of founders, environmental factors, business models and success/failure cases of companies already recognized as unicorns rather than a multifaceted approach. The occurrence of unicorn companies and Macroscopic analysis of related factors is lacking. Against this background, this study are considering the characteristics of unicorns examined through previous research and the current status unicorns with a high proportion of technology companies, the purpose was to analyze the impact of the country's technological competitiveness, such as 'technology human resource index', 'R&D index', and 'technology infrastructure index', on the increase in unicorn companies. For statistical analysis, data published by various international organizations, the Bank of Korea, and Statistics Korea from 2017 to 2020 and unicorn company data compiled by CB Insights were used as panel data for 44 countries to be tested by multiple regression analysis. As a result of the study, it was confirmed that the number of science majors had a positive (+) effect on the increase of unicorn companies in the case of technology human resource index, and in the case of R&D index, the total amount of R&D investment had a positive (+) effect on the increase of unicorn companies, while the number of Triad Patents Families and the number of scientific and technological papers published had a negative (-) effect on the increase of unicorn companies. Finally, in the case of technology infrastructure index, it was confirmed that the number of the world's 500th-ranked universities had a positive (+) effect on the increase of unicorn companies. This study is the first to reveal the causal relationship between national technological competitiveness and unicorn company growth based on country-specific and time-series empirical data, which were insufficiently covered in previous studies. and compared to the UN's ranking of the global industrial competitiveness index and the OECD's total R&D investment by country, Korea is considered to have technological and growth potential, while the number of unicorn companies driving growth as leaders of the innovative economy is relatively small, so the research results can be used when establishing policies to discover and foster unicorn companies in the future.

• International Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.29-40
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• 2008

This study clarified the classifications of Vietnamese traditional patterns and analyzed the symbolic meanings that reflect the emotional and cultural background of the Vietnamese. The type and symbolism of Vietnamese traditional patterns were analyzed through research on the history of Vietnamese costumes, the history of Vietnamese arts, the history of Vietnamese traditional culture, and a Vietnamese museum survey. The results of this study were as follows: 1. Animal patterns are diverse and include dragons, unicorns, tortoises, phoenixes, cranes, lions, bats, tigers, and buffalo patterns. 2. Dragon patterns are the most utilized pattern for practical purposes. They are often used in royal costumes, Vietnamese traditional dresses, mandarin boots, bamboo fans, silk, satin, ceramics, and other detailed decorations. 3. The patterns symbolized fortune that meant good luck and longevity so people can live long and happy. Then the symbolic meanings of patterns were followed by prosperity, nobleness, apotropism, prolificacy, and wealth. 4. Since the most of animal patterns have symbolic meanings of fortune and longevity, animal patterns can be utilized as the source of traditional patterns of design inspiration for the development of Vietnamese modern patterns and the application on Vietnamese fashion products.

• 한국벤처창업학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2021.04a
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• pp.33-42
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• 2021

Based on the findings of Lee et al.(2020) and Lee & Oh(2021), this paper aims to fill the gap in our knowledge regarding the relationship between strategic choices and corporate growth by utilizing a novel dataset of 'Unicorn' and 'Hyper-growing' companies. Two previous studies provide coherent findings that the relationship between firms' strategies and their performance should be explored under a more comprehensive framework with consideration of both internal and external factors. Therefore, in this study, we apply a single conceptual framework to two different datasets, which considers the strategy factors as independent variables, and the industry(market) and the firm age as moderating variables. For our dependent variables, valuations for unicorn companies and revenue CAGR for hyper-growing companies are used after categorizing them into three uniform groups. The strategy variables include 'Generic (Cost-leadership, Differentiation, focus) strategies', 'Growth(Organic, M&A) strategies', 'Leading(Pioneer, Fast-follower) strategies', 'Target market(B2B, B2C, B2G, C2C) strategies', 'Global(Global, Local) strategies', 'Digital(Online, Offline) strategies.' For industry(market) factors, it consists of historical growth rate for industries and economic, demographic, and regulatory aspects of states and countries. To overcome the differences in their units, they are also uniformly categorized into multiple groups. Before we conduct a regression analysis, we analyze the industry distribution of the 'Unicorn' and the 'Hyper-growing' companies with descriptive statistics at the integrated and individual levels. Next, we employ hierarchical regression models on Study A('Unicorn' companies in 2019) and Study B('Hyper-growing' companies in 2019) under the same comprehensive framework. We then analyze the relationship between the 'strategy' and the 'performance' factors with two different approaches: 1) an integrated regression model with both the sample of Study A and B and 2) respective regression models on Study A and B. This empirical study aims to provide a complete understanding and a reference to which strategy factors should be considered to promote firms' scale-up and growth.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.189-201
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• 2023

The purpose of this study is to analyze the ICT startup investment status in Korea and examine the relationship between startups and venture capitals by network analysis. In this study, the Gephi was used to analyze network attribute values and to compare the results of each centrality. As a result of the analysis, IMM investment, Altos Ventures, and Smilegate Investment were located in the top ranks in each centrality. It can present that venture capital companies ranked high in betweenness centrality, closeness centrality, eigenvector centrality have continuously invested in growing startups into unicorns from 2014 to 2019. These results can be used as data for startups want to receive funding from venture capital in the future in consider to the relation of startup and invest industry. This study provides information to develop strategies for the sustainable venture investment environment in Korea of stakeholders such as startups, venture capital, consumers, and the government; as a result, it can help various follow-up studies in the field of startups and venture capital.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.11-27
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• 2019

The second venture "boom" diffusion strategy can be confirmed to be focused only on financing investment and finance, including achieving 5 trillion won annually in new venture investments, creating 20 unicorns, activating M&As and creating dynamic recovery markets. Of course, existing studies show that the fund is a very important policy for corporate growth, but various policy support will be needed to effectively scale up. To overcome these limitations, the scale-up support policies already in operation are analyzed by introducing scale-up policies in advanced countries such as the U.S. and Britain. It also aims to analyze domestic scale-up policies to draw up implications for establishing more effective scale-up policies. Academically, we are very lacking in research on scale-up at home and abroad, and we propose suggestions through this comparative study of policy cases to contribute to the promotion of various studies related to the scalability aspects of future research topics related to scale-up.

• 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.