What do young Koreans think about entrepreneurship?

JayMok’s family was shocked: 29-year-old, he was young, just married, graduated from a top university in Seoul, and owned a position in a multinational consulting company A good job, his career was originally a source of pride for him, but he resolutely resigned and poured his savings into developing a smartphone application.

The older generation doesn’t know as much about IT or mobile business as we do, he said, “They think if I fail, the whole family will be doomed.” ?

A group of young entrepreneurs scattered across Seoul's Gangnam district, a neighborhood filled with high-rise buildings and trendy shopping crowds, are trying to make up for South Korea's lack of innovative start-ups. Gathered in borrowed houses or rented offices, they are launching software companies of all kinds, in an area where initial costs are lower than in other industries and are not dominated by the country's powerful "chaebol" conglomerates.

While South Korean companies such as Samsung Electronics or Hyundai Motor are often portrayed as dynamic upstarts overseas, at home they have been a major player in the country's economy for decades. A pivotal role, just like other chaebols. Experts worry that South Korea's prosperity has kept the younger generation from being as enthusiastic about entrepreneurship as the likes of Hyundai founder Chung Ju-yung, whose story of rising from a poor farmer to a big entrepreneur is a defining moment of South Korea's development. The epitome of road.

However, software entrepreneurs in Jiangnan District believe that these worries are unwarranted. JayMok said of his app, Step, which lets users record their daily activities: "More than 95% of our users are outside South Korea." The app is promoted as a private diary rather than a social tool, recording rather than sharing. He believes that this is a gap in the market.

This application currently has 10,000 users, and its developers predict that the number of users will reach 200,000 this year. But when JayMok and co-founder Daniel Cho (Daniel Cho) founded WePlanet, in addition to the suspicion of their parents, they also had to deal with other annoying things. Financing is a thorny issue for entrepreneurs in South Korea, where the venture capital industry is small and banks are more willing to lend to "chaebols." The two founders started the business using $150,000 they had saved from previous jobs in the consulting industry.

But they also have external support. Entrepreneur Jimmy Kim (pictured above), a cheerful 42-year-old, founded Sparklabs last year with two friends to provide startups with financing and advice from a global network of advisors. Sparklabs' founders have made fortunes in high-tech startups: Kim helped found the gaming company Nexon and then founded Innotive, which makes management software for big businesses. But they are well aware of the obstacles others face.

For example, bankruptcy laws can be scary, King said. ?(In the past), if you went bankrupt in Korea, you almost became a criminal. There is a famous saying in Korea that entrepreneurs are true patriots because they really risk their lives. ?

Sparklabs has incubated 16 start-ups, providing each company with $25,000 in funding and mentors including executives from foreign companies such as Google, Nike and Deloitte. ? suggestions. The participation of these foreign business executives reflects the growing foreign interest in South Korea's software industry. South Korea's smartphone usage and mobile Internet speed are at very high levels. "When I travel in the U.S., Hong Kong and Singapore, people are very curious about Korean startups," Kim said, citing the rise of Nexon, Kakao Talk and (software group) NHN, as well as global brands like Samsung and LG. Synergies? K-pop has also worked wonders for businesses,? he added, referring to the Korean music industry's success overseas.

Another start-up that Kim is responsible for incubating is Knowre, which was founded by three engineering graduates and a management consultant. They were inspired by hagwon, an after-school tutoring institution attended by most Korean school-age children. (College). They believe that computer programs can provide a more fun and successful way to help children learn mathematics.

We want it to feel like a video game, said company co-founder Simon Kim. ?On one screen he showed, a user was walking through a densely forested terrain. As they invested in program development, they set up their own hagwon to research target markets and raise capital. In the end, they concluded that Korean parents' attachment to the hagwon system meant their program had little chance of success in Korea in the short term, but they saw better prospects in the United States.

Early last year, their plan attracted $400,000 in investment from angel investors in South Korea and the United States. A few months later, they secured a $1.3 million investment from Japanese telecommunications group SoftBank, and their app was recently named the best teaching app in a New York City Department of Education competition. Knowre is expected to turn a profit for the first time next year.

However, Lee Kark-bum, head of the research organization FutureThinknet, warned that South Korea’s environment is still unfavorable for entrepreneurs. He said that among those who support startups, too many have a short-term lender mentality rather than being prepared to be long-term investors, which means they scare entrepreneurs, distract them and hinder them. Create sustainable value. Separately, he added, successive governments have done too little to help startups get onto the international stage.

As a lesson, LeeKark-bum mentioned Cyworld, a social networking site that was once popular in 2003. The company lost its independence after its owners sold controlling stake to SK Group, one of South Korea's largest chaebols; although it had about 20 million users in 2006, Cyworld failed to expand overseas. That fact weighed on its performance in its home country. LeeKark-bum said: They failed to overcome the English barrier and the domestic market is too small. ?

However, the rise of smartphones has brought new opportunities. KakaoTalk, an instant messaging service created in early 2010 and now used by most Korean smartphone users, hit 100 million users last week. The company's co-CEO Lee Sir-goo said the environment for startups is improving, but there is still a long way to go. "Venture capital investors are on the rise, but banks won't lend to startups unless you have collateral," he said. "For IT services like ours, some regulations make it difficult for us to provide services." In the United States, credit card payments are relatively easy, but here users must enter full credit card details for every transaction. ?

He added that previous Korean governments’ measures to support start-ups were often flawed, and assistance to start-ups often came with stringent conditions.

However, JayMok said that some of the measures promised by the new South Korean government are promising. ?Prior to last year, the government focused on creating start-ups rather than helping them grow. The new administration appears to have learned this lesson. ?

Many of my friends want to make the jump to work for start-ups. The younger generation is completely different from the older generation. We are less loyal to big business. ? ;