• 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.15 no.5
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• pp.1-11
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• 2020

Increasing the number of unicorn startups has recently received much attention. In this study, we attempt to investigate that startups achieving an extremely high valuation could postpone their exit to raise more investment and receive more benefits. This study tested the hypotheses using data from Crunchbase, World Bank, Global Competitiveness Report, and Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Using 140 unicorn startups that have already exited through an initial public offering (IPO) or mergers and acquisitions (M&A), we find out that unicorn startups tend to acquire higher valuation as their investment duration increases. Furthermore, we also examined the moderating effects of governmental policy and institutional distance from foreign investors in order to consider the institutional aspects of startups. The results of the moderating variables show significant supports. We expect to provide a better understanding with respect to making an exit decision of unicorn startups. Furthermore, managers and investors need to acknowledge the institutional factors of startups when they decide to fund.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.17-39
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• 2021

Indonesia's industrial application of digital technology is growing fast, especially in the application of mobile technology. About 1,700 digital startups are sprouting. PT Aplikasi Karya Anak Bangsa is one of those digital startups founded in 2010. This company is widely known, especially in Southeast Asia, for its products and services called 'Gojek' which was launched initially in 2015. Gojek began as a ride-hailing mobile-based application that later evolved into a Super App providing more than 20 different services in one single mobile application. After becoming Indonesian first unicorn company in 2016, Gojek now has become the first decacorn company in Indonesia, worth more than USD 10 billion since 2019. This paper aims to analyzes the technology industry in Indonesia and analyzes Gojek's background and history, its competitive status, and critical success factors. As a conclusion, we provide some advices for future development of Gojek in Indonesia and other countries in Southeast Asia's market. The advices include rebranding its overseas presence and the use of consistent brand identity across countries.

• 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.11 no.5
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• pp.29-43
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• 2016

The Lean Startup, a methodology for minimizing failure rate of startups, has been receiving attention since its publication in 2011. Although it has been receiving enormous attention as an effective methodology of startups' growth and the emergence of unicorn companies, it is undeniable that the theoretical research and cases on this topic have not been fully accumulated in Korea. Progress of management theory has been made when combining the theory and case studies. In this paper, we thus excavated the 'Cardoc' case, which has applied the lean startup concept to the entire process of service and customer development from the inception of its product design. The following are the findings of the case. First, for the successful application of lean startup, it is essential that all team members to understand the lean startup concept and are willing to apply it thoroughly to the business management. Second, the prompt launching of MVP(Minimum Viable Product) is more important than table discussion. Third, it is crucial to select the appropriate key metrics and analytic tools for effective learning. Fourth, startup must scale up promptly as soon as it verifies the product-market fit through the BML(Build-Measure-Learn) iteration cycle. Fifth, all new business expansion should be lean. Cardoc is currently testing new MVPs in order to move onto the next scale-up process with huge investments in newly added segments. This study is meaningful in that it elaborates the representative case of a Korean startup that has applied the lean startup strategy under the circumstance of insufficient discussion of Korean startup cases in comparison with growing attention both in concept development and case accumulation abroad. We hope that this paper can be a stepping stone for future relevant research on the implementation of lean startup methodology in Korea.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.25-58
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• 2021

This study investigated the corporate growth with more emphasis on longitudinal characteristics, not the results of companies with relatively more emphasis on cross-sectional, in the 21st-century entrepreneurial context. As of the end of 2019, sampled 479 global unicorn companies, and 333 high-growth companies with revenue of more than $100 million among 5,000 private companies in the U.S. with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) exceeding 15% for the past three years. They were examined with 3 perspectives in terms of corporate growth that 1) the growth of enterprise value, 2) the pace of growth, and 3) the effectiveness of growth. As a result of our study, the corporate growth of the perspective of creating enterprise value had a relatively higher relationship with the characteristics of industries and markets. The pace of growth was more fully explained by the characteristics of the industry and the market environment and the choice of strategies that make up a valid combination. In addition, growth in terms of the effectiveness of corporate performance was influenced by the choice of strategy, the characteristics of the industry and market environment, and its business age, the proxy variable of resource accumulation, comprehensively. This study through a sample based on companies with an enterprise value of more than $1 billion and annual revenue of more than $100 million can be a valid reference in terms of creating milestones and roadmaps for scale-up of early-stage startups, particularly in terms of practitioners' point of view. It also provides a critical reference for overcoming the limitations of mainstream theories of the 20th century and developing the theory of corporate growth that fits the 21st-century entrepreneurial context.