Weekly VentureSquare Stories are summaries of some of the week’s top posts relating to the Korean startup and venture Industry.
Your Startup and Your Team
I still remember the time when the terms ‘startup’ and ‘venture’ were uncommon. If you need to remember one thing about startups it is that “Startups = People”. If you currently run a startup, never forget that those people who you work with everyday are your company. Here are some good points and phrases from the Startup Bible which talk about how important your people are to you and your company.
Enjoy Heated Arguments
While looking at Korean companies I sometimes get frustrated by certain things and one of these is ‘heated arguments’. It is commonplace in corporate offices and it seems that this also happens in startups too. It could come down to how we were taught as kids, that if we don’t speak up we won’t get ahead. Usually in these situations our opinions get tangled up with our feelings. We feel upset if someone does not agree with our point of view and maybe even try to get a little revenge. Arguing your point in Korean culture can be harder, as rank and politeness are important as opposed to an English speaking company, where management are often called by their first name.
COEX and Ticket Monster Join Hands to Help Small Businesses
On August 24, COEX joined with social commerce leader Ticket Monster to create CyberCoex (www.cybercoex.co.kr), an agreement between the two companies to help positively support small businesses in marketing and product distribution. For those small businesses who take part in CyberCoex, their products will be marketed via the Ticket Monster platform. Using this, companies taking part can get the same benefits of an offline expo online.
Lee Min-hwa’s Startup Advice (1)
In 1998 the Korea Venture Business Association put forward a proposal called ‘Internet Korea’ to policy makers in order to help the country recover from the recent IMF crisis. It was a way to two kill birds with one stone; provide jobs for college graduates and help improve the economic situation at the same time. There was an effort to train 1,000,000 college graduates as webmasters to help small businesses around Korea create homepages. Korea became more connected with broadband Internet and the first ‘PC rooms’ in the world. From this point, many companies such as Naver, Nexon, Neowiz and Ncsoft were created, stimulating the economy and establishing the base for Korea’s strong internet culture and future startups.
Skype Enters the Group Messaging Business
Internet phone leader Skype has acquired ‘Groupme’, a group text messaging program founded last year. Although no details about the contract have been released, at a price of 80,000,000 it is no small investment. Though some don’t believe it, it is hard to deny the fact that users’ habits are changing and they are more and more often choosing text chat over voice chat. Just look at the 10,000,000 users using both Kakao talk and MyPeople and it is hard not to admit that people are turning to text for communication.
Fixing up Your Company’s Software – Why UX is important
They say a cow produces less milk with older age. A company’s software can be seen to have similar qualities. As new versions of the software come out year after year, more functions and tools are added to each update. As these new functions are added, though they make take the same amount of effort to make, the importance of each one decreases. So what can one do? Throw away your software and start from scratch? Well that may be one answer, but Patrick Whitney, dean of Illinois Institue of Technology has introduced a new concept called the “Innovation Gap”. You can read more about Whitney’s theory here.
Young Entrepreneur Competition
This is a great opportunity for young entrepreneurs at the upcoming competition title “We love you Korea! Young Entrepreneur Competition”. The top prize is up to 100,000,000won plus help with development of the product, investment needs, any problems regarding law and establishing the business; and product and service marketing. Heats will take place up until the 3rd of October and the competition will be held at the end of the same month.
* For more information call (02) 724-0912 or e-mail