• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.177-189
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• 2018

Business environment is always full of challenges. Despite various strategic efforts, there are so many failure cases of misfit. With the weaker resource base and institutional foundation, startup firms find it more difficult to find the right spot in the stiff competition. In the middle of evolutionary process, the startup firms need proper strategies meeting the differential challenges along the multiple stages of growth. Following the idea of product life cycle, this study applies the four stages of growth-startup, initial growth, accelerated growth, matured, and decliing. The next step for the startup manager is meeting each stage of growth with proper strategic efforts, including strategy, structure, decision-making pattern, and control method. When the knowledge factor is introduced, there is a potential for higher performance. Based on the 'Detailed Survey on Startup Ventures in 2017,' this study explores the impact of the government subsidy program on the firm competitiveness and performance-along the four stages of growth. In each stage, the strategy factors showed differential impact.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.125-141
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• 2020

This study examines the effect of founders' strategic orientation and social capital on the performance of startups in Korean contexts. Founders' strategic orientation is proposed as the main factor to reduce the risk of failure and to increase the potential of future growth of the startup. Three main components of strategic orientation, entrepreneurial, market, technology, were simultaneously tested with a sample of Korean startups. Furthermore, founders' social capital, networks with supporting entities and the level of chemistry within founding members were also proposed to be important factors. We also tested possible mediating effects of social capital on the main impact of strategic orientation. With a sample of 79 startups founded less than 5 years in Seoul Metropolitan Areas, we found that technology orientation of founders only significantly increases the performance of startups, but both entrepreneurial and market orientation do not. Regarding social capital effect, the external networks of the founding members are effective as proposed, and also the high cohesiveness of founding members increases the startup performance. However, the mediating role of social capital is just partially confirmed. The implications of our findings, in both sense of firm's strategy and startup policy, are discussed. This study is expected to be a bridge connecting firms' strategy with startup policy-making in Korea.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.35-43
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• 2023

Purpose: As Thailand seeks to become a regional startup hub, Thai startups have been acquiring growth and scalability in the last ten years. Hence, this paper examines influential factors in Thailand's growth of logistics tech startups. The conceptual framework incorporates sensing user needs, sensing technological options, conceptualizing, scaling, and stretching, co-producing, and orchestrating, business strategy, strategic flexibility, and startup growth. Research design, data, and methodology: The quantitative method was applied to distribute the questionnaire to 500 managers and above in logistics tech startups in Thailand. The sampling techniques involve judgmental, convenience, and snowball samplings. Before the data collection, The Item Objective Congruence (IOC) Index and pilot test (n=45) were employed for content validity and reliability. The data were mainly analyzed by Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Model (SEM). Results: The findings revealed that sensing technological options, scaling, and stretching, co-producing, and orchestrating, and business strategy significantly influence the growth of startups in Thailand. Nevertheless, sensing user needs, conceptualizing, and strategic flexibility have no significant relationship with startup growth. Conclusions: For Thailand to accelerate its digital economy driven by tech startups, firms must emphasize influential factors to accelerate growth by providing the right tech solutions for people's lives.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.27-42
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• 2015

The aim of this research is to investigate the difference in the capturing opportunities for each type of venture companies in the industry undergoing competition of a dominant design and then figure out the reason why they can be successful. Existing studies on venture companies are focused on the way to enhance a firm's competencies by acquiring and combining its resources. However, it is important for startups which have a lack of resources and capabilities to capture the opportunity to survive by understanding a changing environment. This study is focused on opportunity capture and strategic response to a changing environment and attempts to select and observe startup companies which are able to capture the opportunity and enter the market in the industry undergoing dominant design competition. In order to find out its difference in different types of business, we select one case from hardware startups and the other from software startups. According to the result of this study, the hardware startup focuses on market extension by lowering their prices and the software startup strives to induce more users to participate by the universalization of enabling technology so as to extend and standardize their technology in the environment undergoing dominant design competition. This feature of environment leads the difference in the approach for successfully capturing opportunity and thus hardware firms need to recognize the opportunity with profit potential from relationship with a number of cooperative firms while software firms need to identify the opportunity for extension of enabling technology which can be used by many users.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.97-110
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• 2020

This paper is on the policy proposal for venture ecosystem. First, one of the three secrets of the US venture ecosystem is the law of 50:50. Angel capital investment is as important as venture capital investment. Although professional angel investors and accelerators account for as much as VC in the venture ecosystem, they are ignored from policy considerations. We argue that the revision of related law is urgent. Second, large US firms invest more in M&As than in internal R&D. Therefore, accelerators and professional angel investors could make effective investment recovery after investing in a startup company. In other words, angel capital does not come in without secondary market development. Angel capital and secondary markets are the two pillars of the venture ecosystem. The government alone is difficult to develop a secondary market. This is why the private sector should come in and introduce corporate venture capital (CVC). Third, we believe the policy direction for national economic growth should be extended from the startup to scale-up. This is because the startup's sales and job creation will start in five years. While the previous study focused on funding (venture financing), this paper aims to balance all three stages of a venture: startup, growth, and recovery, which are the life cycle of a venture company or venture investment. In particular, we propose specific policies in each chapter to improve practical application.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.147-157
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• 2023

This paper investigates the financial factors affecting angel investors' investment decisions for 818 firms from 2009 to 2018 in the Korean venture investment market. We construct a quasi-experimental design using propensity scoring matching and compare the investment determinants between investment firms and matching firms. The main empirical findings are as follows. First, we find that angel investors are more likely to choose firms based on a firm's growth such as profit and assets rather than profitability or financial stability. In addition, we identify that they prefer the firm not only higher intangible assets but also higher R&D expenditures. Second, we find that angel investors consider both growth and activity ratios in the firms for over three years and have entered the mid-stage of startups. Overall, we confirm that the investment decision of angel investors mainly focuses on the venture startups' growth trend or future growth potential rather than the realized profitability or financial stability. We also infer that the possibility of performance creation is an important investment factor along with growth for the mid-stage startup.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.199-233
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• 2014

This paper attempts to investigate how and why the additionality effects occur in the case when a firm receives government subsidy as opposed to counterfactual situation. To demonstrate this, we selected 12 SMEs(small and medium enterprises) firms in Daejeon area and have conducted multiple case studies. In order to analyse the multiple cases of firms, we classified firms innovative activities into three stages which are composed of input, behaviour and output stages and related various factors. Furthermore, we investigated the differences according to types of firms and stages of firm growth. Empirical results show that various input, behaviour and output additionality effects exist when firms receive public subsidies. Compared to companies in the growth and mature stages, startup phase companies depend on government subsidy extensively and they use public subsidies strategically to develop new product and to change their strategic direction. The attitude of firms to use government subsidies is different according to their types and stage of growth as well.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.21-46
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• 2013

The purpose of this paper is to find impacts of financial activities-financing and investment of Venture Firms during pre-listing periods on the firms' Venture Firm's listing(delisting). The several ratios financial variables relevant to the financing and investment were examined whether there are difference or not between two venture firms groups. The results of study can be summarized as follows. First, the firms of successful group have fewer numbers of equity financing and higher times of premium in issuing stocks than those of failed firms but there is no significant difference in the required time from startup to listing the KOSDAQ. Second, there is no significant difference in the ratio of capital increase in IPO between two groups but additional survey reveals that the successful firms financed equity in IPO by higher numbers of premium than failed firms, which can makes the major shareholder of the successful firms maintain high rayios share of stock. Third, the ratio of working capital investment of the successful firms is significantly higher than that of failed firms, on the other hand the failed firms' ratios of equipment and repayment investment are higher than those of successful firms. Finally, the ratio of R&D investment has no difference between two groups, this result is against the expectation, which is to be further analyzed.

• 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.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.66 no.8
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• pp.109-122
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• 2016

This study is to explore the ways to increase the export performance of start-up companies, as opportunities are rising along with more companies entering the global market. Thus the study analyzed the factors affecting export performance of the start-up company by mainly looking at the international marketing capabilities of enterprises type of marketing strategy and internal environmental capabilities. The following were derived as factors for marketing 4P strategy: innovation of product, flexibility of export price, differentiation of distribution channels, diversity of promotional activities, and positive-ness of promotion. For internal capabilities of enterprises, innovation of CEO, initiative of CEO, risk susceptibility of CEO, information power of export market, and information power of competitor were derived as factors. Two types of performances were considered for export performance, financial and non-financial. Among innovation of product and risk susceptibility of CEO the non-financial performance of export performance, and only differentiation of distribution channels of marketing 4p strategy the financial performance. It showed that since performance was different depending on the entrepreneurship of the CEO, only innovative products differentiated from small and medium enterprises. risk susceptibility of CEO increased export outlook by corporate acknowledgment and image, creation of potential customers, and financial performance affected only differentiation in distribution channel rather than entrepreneurial spirit, information power, or organizational flexibility because of short business career and insufficient period enough to gain trust. Therefore, start-up companies need to improve their non-financial export performance by increasing innovation of product and risk susceptibility of the CEO. The companies need to widen the differentiation of distribution channels in the financial export performance.