On February 14 , the Early-stage Investment Accelerator Association released the ‘2024 South Korea Early-stage Startup Investment (Accelerator) Industry Ecosystem Survey Report.’
This report was prepared based on a survey conducted from December 24 last year to January 17 this year to collect opinions on the environment of the accelerator and early-stage startup investment ecosystem in Korea and future policy directions. A total of 104 industry professionals responded.
The report contains key contents such as ▲2024 ecosystem experience atmosphere ▲2025 ecosystem outlook ▲job satisfaction ▲organization of autonomous opinions on 2025 policies, etc.
The survey results showed that the ecosystem atmosphere in 2024 has worsened compared to 2023. The positive response rate decreased by 10%p from 27% to 17%, and the negative response rate increased by 8%p from 42% to 50%. In particular, negative evaluations were predominant overall in the startup investment market environment, startup business environment, government acceleration program, and accelerator business environment.
In the industry, the two items of 'continuation of the cold season for venture investment (28.1%)' and 'reduction of R&D budget (24.7%)' were selected as the most important issues with a combined majority of 52.7%, followed by 'TIPS crisis and demand for change', 'AC-VC double license', and 'withdrawal of accelerator top tier listing'. This suggests that the structural change of the industry and the survival strategy of accelerators are important at this time.
In addition, 70.2% of respondents had negative opinions about the venture investment joint guarantee system. The opinion that "let's keep it as it is now" was the most common at 39.4%, and the response that "joint guarantees for founders should be prohibited by specifying it in the venture promotion law" was 32.7%. In addition, the need for policy improvement to protect founders was raised.
61.5% of respondents expected the accelerator ecosystem to deteriorate in 2025. In particular, there were many negative opinions about securing investment resources and activating the recovery market. However, some positive expectations were expressed about the increase in promising startups and the increase in investment and incubation experts.
The policies that need to be supplemented most urgently were selected as easing the investment obligation ratio (20.7%), expanding the mother fund exclusively for startup planners (17.4%), and activating secondary funds (13.2%). In addition, the most notable startup investment areas in 2025 were AI/deep tech (29.6%), robots (10.4%), environment/climate (8.8%), and healthcare (7.5%).
The respondents suggested various policy improvement suggestions, such as improving the investment environment, deregulation, establishing AC-VC differentiation policies, expanding AC-only mother funds, and activating secondary funds, and the association included a specific roadmap for these in the report. Based on the results of this survey, the association stated that it will actively work to reflect the industry’s voices in policies and to achieve sustainable growth and co-evolution of the early-stage venture investment industry in Korea.
- See more related articles
You must be logged in to post a comment.