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The Booming Korean Startup Ecosystem
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00:01Thank you Minister Young for such a powerful speech.
00:07South Korea is really growing to become one of the leading startup hubs in East Asia.
00:14So, in order to dive deeper into this conversation,
00:18I want to welcome the first panel of the day moderated by Nicolas Madeleine from Les Ecos.
00:25Nicolas, the floor is now yours.
00:57I'll see you next time.
01:12Hello everybody. I'm Nicolas Madeleine. I'm the tech and media editor at Les Ecos.
01:20I have here with me Jung-Wook Lim, who is Deputy Minister at the Ministry of SMEs and Startups in
01:27Korea.
01:28On my far left, Sophie Ohm, who is Chief Executive of a digital marketing company called Adriel.
01:36And right on my left, Fleur Pellerin, who is today founder and CEO of Corellia Capital,
01:42and a former Minister for Culture and Digital Ecosystem in France.
01:48We are going to be talking about the booming Korean startup ecosystem.
01:53Korea is the, as you know, country of the year at VivaTech.
01:57I think it's an interesting case for France.
02:00It's two countries that are punching above their weight and pride themselves of their cultural influence further than their borders.
02:11First, I'd like each member of the panels to introduce themselves and tell a bit more, not too long, about
02:19their backgrounds.
02:20So maybe Sophie first?
02:22Hello everyone. I'm Sophie. I am CEO and co-founder of Adriel. Adriel is a B2B software.
02:30We are built for marketers, built by marketers. We provide a dashboard for marketing performance data.
02:37We gather data from Meta, Google, all those digital platforms and provide a single source of truth.
02:52And I'm also very excited to be the VivaTech.
03:00This is my seventh visit to Paris, charming city.
03:06And I'm also very, you know, excited to be the VivaTech.
03:12This is my seventh visit to Paris, charming city.
03:12This is my first time. We are the part of the delegation of the country of the year this time.
03:18And we are very glad that. There are about, you know, some almost 80, you know, start-ups from Korea
03:26this time.
03:26So probably the largest international delegation to VivaTech. So excited about it. Thank you.
03:34Okay. And Fleur?
03:35And my name is Fleur Pellerin. So I used to be the minister for digital actually when VivaTech first edition
03:41was taking place.
03:43I was minister at the time. And then I was briefly minister for foreign trade and tourism and minister for
03:49culture and communication.
03:51And now the founder of a venture capital fund doing a lot of business with Korea because my investors are
03:57Korean.
03:58Naver was mentioned earlier. So Naver is the LP of my venture capital fund.
04:03And we help European scale-ups in the tech ecosystem to develop their business in Asia and in Korea.
04:10Okay, great. I'd like to start with John Wook with a question for you on, yes, what happened in the
04:20last 5-10 years in Korea?
04:21Why the Korean ecosystems started to bloom? And what was the role of the government in that?
04:31Yeah, looking back, you know, about 10 years ago, there wasn't that much start-ups in Korea, actually.
04:38And people are no longer, not that much interested in joining a start-up and starting a business.
04:44So, Korean government around, you know, 10 years ago, starting to push for the creative economy and some supporting entrepreneurship.
04:55The first thing we did is that we are actually trying to change the image perception of the start-up.
05:04People think that the start-up is kind of a dangerous thing.
05:08joining is like the FAO. So, young people like to join the big corporations like the Samsung or LG.
05:16So, government actually, the president and a lot of, you know, some high-rank officials emphasize the importance of the
05:23start-ups.
05:24Entrepreneurship is very vital to the growing economy.
05:28And also, we provide many interesting programs for encouraging the entrepreneurs.
05:34Provide the subsidies and grants and also education for the, you know, entrepreneurs.
05:40We try to also build the communities, actually.
05:45And so, we encourage the, you know, entrepreneurs at a lot of events like this.
05:50And also, we provide a fund for the venture capital industry.
05:54So, we encourage the, you know, some venture capitalists, you know, aggressively investing in the early-stage, you know, companies
06:03like that.
06:04Can you tell how much?
06:06The funds, the funding, the government funding?
06:09The kind of size of the venture investment in Korea is about 10 billion a year, actually.
06:15So, it's about five times, actually, increased over the last 10 years.
06:21So, it actually helps to grow the lot of, you know, some big, you know, successful.
06:27We are starting to have a lot of successful unicorn start-ups, actually.
06:31So, young people really loves to use the start-up, you know, the product and service.
06:37So, it actually raised the perception about the start-up.
06:41And people starting to thinking that joining a start-up is a cool thing.
06:46A lot of young people actually wants to join the start-up, you know, or their own business, rather than
06:52joining, you know, Samsung or LG and Hyundai.
06:55So, that kind of things actually have for the last 10 years.
06:59So, that's been very successful.
07:01Okay. Thank you very much.
07:02Sophie, would you like to talk about the new generation of Korean and how they can help the start-up
07:14ecosystem go global?
07:17So, new Korean generation being very competitive in the global market?
07:22My answer is really simple.
07:25It's the people.
07:26As you may all know, South Korea has gone through so many drastic changes.
07:32Korean War was only seven years ago.
07:35And our GDP per capita went from 300 US dollars in 1970 to 35,000 dollars in 2021.
07:43That all happened over the last 50 years.
07:46And our parents built everything that we have literally out of nothing.
07:51And what you can tell here is that Koreans just love building and creating things from scratch.
07:57We are fast learners, and we learn especially well from our own failures.
08:02We're pretty good at self-criticism.
08:04We always want to progress, and we always want to be better than what we were in the past.
08:10And that's why you see a huge difference that the new Korean generation has compared to our parents' generation.
08:16The new generation are in a completely different environment.
08:21We're in a completely different environment compared to our parents.
08:26Different education, different media content, different perspective of a job and a career.
08:32Our parents, they could easily get a job if they had a university degree,
08:38and they could build their wealth along with the huge economic growth of the whole nation.
08:42That's why you see today Samsung, Hyundai, LG, all those huge conglomerates.
08:47They're very successful both inside and outside of Korea.
08:51But the thing with those big companies is that they're mostly in hardware and infrastructure industries.
08:58But my generation is facing a different environment.
09:02We're in the era of AI, media, mobile apps, and service.
09:06Our parents did try to go global with service businesses, but they did not really succeed, I would say.
09:12Do you know any service or mobile app that went global since many years ago?
09:17There are not many.
09:19Probably because to be successful with service businesses, you really have to speak the language of the target market,
09:27and you have to understand their culture.
09:29But that's something that our parents did not quite have the privilege to experience with.
09:35But the new gen is different.
09:37The new generation was exposed to a lot of content outside of Korea.
09:44And we traveled and studied abroad a lot.
09:48You know, traveling abroad was not really something common, you know, even 20 years ago.
09:52But now my generation, we travel and study abroad, and we speak the language of others.
09:58We understand really well the culture of others.
10:00We embrace new things.
10:02We are very adaptive to changes.
10:04And that difference that the new generation has, combined with our Korean DNA of loving to work, loving to earn
10:13money,
10:14taking it very seriously to always being economically active, I think that sets us apart.
10:20That combination sets us apart, and that will eventually result in many successful global startups originated from Korea.
10:29Would you say it's still the dream of mom and dad for their offspring to join a conglomerate like Samsung
10:37and LG?
10:38And is there a conflict of generation with young people willing to join startup and be more entrepreneurial and take
10:45more risks?
10:47Well, I cannot speak for everybody.
10:49Of course.
10:50But if you see, like, if I may talk about the megatrend, clearly there are a lot more people who
11:00want to become entrepreneurs than before.
11:02Being an entrepreneur, being simply self-employed and having your own company, having your own business and try to have,
11:11let's say, bigger impact by yourself became something that more people dream of than joining big companies.
11:19I mean, there are still a lot of people who want to join big companies, but there are many, many
11:25entrepreneurs from, like, top universities.
11:28And there are a lot more talents.
11:32And there are a lot more talents going global after they start startup because Korea is such a small country.
11:40Like, compared to the number of talents and number of startups that you see, the market is small.
11:46And unfortunately, it's going to get even smaller because of the low birth rates.
11:50That's a really sad trend.
11:51So that's also why you're going to see a lot more Korean startups competing in the global market in the
11:57future than before.
11:58OK.
11:59In France, also, the market, the job market is changing.
12:04Fleur, I'd like to ask you about what do you think are the similarities between the Korean public policy for
12:13a thriving startup ecosystem?
12:18What are the comparisons between, and the difference between the two countries?
12:23I was really very interested in listening to what you had to say about the Korean ecosystem because I feel
12:31there's a lot of common traits or things that you really can compare.
12:36First, between our countries, not necessarily only tech ecosystem, but countries of similar sizes, highly educated, strong legacy industries, conglomerates
12:46in Korea,
12:47but we have strong big businesses in France as well in the industrial sector.
12:52We have a tradition of strong administration.
12:56Sometimes people complain about it, but we have strong administration both in Korea and France.
13:01So we have a lot of similarities.
13:03And when I look at the way the Korean tech ecosystem has developed over the past 10 years,
13:07I think it's very similar to what France has achieved in the same time.
13:12Maybe even a bit faster in Korea because pali pali, you know, it means quick.
13:17It's a very, very cultural, you know, specificity in Korea that things need to be made very fast and there's
13:26this agility.
13:27So probably things have evolved more faster in Korea than in France, but the development has been quite similar.
13:34And I think the administration, the government, successive governments, because there have been different governments over time,
13:39have really supported very strongly the development both of startups, but also of the financing ecosystem,
13:47which is very important because with no financing, it's difficult for startups to develop.
13:51But when I look at the number of unicorns today in Korea, when I look at the number of venture
13:56capital funds,
13:58when I look at the way American funds are now interested in the Korean startups, but also in the French
14:04startups,
14:04I think it's very similar.
14:06And the reason why I decided to create my venture is because I thought because of these similarities
14:11and the compatibilities between our mindset and our ecosystem, I think we can build amazing things together.
14:18If you join forces between French and Korean players, whether they be startups or venture capital funds,
14:25I'm sure that we can be stronger in the competition against the big tech that are mostly American and Chinese.
14:31So I'm very happy to see this confirmed, this intuition confirmed, and I'm sure we can reinforce cooperation between our
14:38ecosystem.
14:39Yeah, I totally agree. And there's a lot of similarity between the two countries.
14:43Interestingly, every year, every year at the CES, Las Vegas, if you go to the Eureka park, that's the for
14:51the startups actually.
14:53You know, Korean companies and French companies actually competing each other to get the attention from the, you know, crowd.
15:00So we can learn from each other and we really admire the achievement of the French tech.
15:07So it's been very successful, you know, some brand for the startup.
15:11And so we are trying to do that, do the same with the K-Startup actually program as well.
15:17Junwo, can you, I'm sure the people here would like to know what are the strengths of the Korean startup
15:28ecosystem,
15:29and maybe the best candidate to go global and become household names also here in France and Europe, without picking
15:37the winners.
15:38Can you tell us what interesting startup could become global and be here soon?
15:46There are many interesting startups, but many companies, unicorn companies actually working inside Korea.
15:54But we have a unicorn named Yanolja. Yanolja is a travel, you know, some company, global travel company.
16:01They are actually, you know, travel platform acquiring companies around the world and, you know, expand it to other countries.
16:10So I think that's the probably very interesting, you know, some example.
16:14Also, we have many good deep tech startup as well.
16:18So especially for AI, you know, areas.
16:21So there's a company named, the Lunit is another unicorn for the company, AI company for the detecting cancer with
16:31AI technology.
16:33They are expanded to the US and the European countries.
16:36So I think that that kind of company is a great partner for the French companies as well.
16:44I think there's a microphone that's going to be available soon for questions, if you want to prepare some here
16:53in the audience.
16:54First, I'd like to know, and maybe with the experience of Fleurin, how easy it is to work with Korean
17:05VC,
17:05how welcome Korean financiers are with international money,
17:12and whether there are already some big VC names that have a presence in Korea.
17:22So actually, I'm raising a fund right now and I will start to invest in Korean startups.
17:27That's going to be interesting.
17:28So I'm going to have to work alongside Korean VC and I'm really very happy and I look forward to
17:32doing it.
17:33I already have many friends in the Korean VC ecosystem.
17:38There are some very interesting companies that have been founded, most of them by Korean Americans or Koreans who have
17:45been educated in the US
17:47and started their career as investors in the US and then came back to Korea to start investing in successful
17:54startups.
17:55And some of them have amazing track records. They've been early investors in most of the most interesting companies in
18:03Korea.
18:05So the VC landscape is changing, it's getting more mature now.
18:11We start to see also a lot of interest, I was saying earlier, from US VCs, from Sequoia, from Accel,
18:19from the Index.
18:20We start investing also in Korea. But I think Korea will be facing the same challenge as we are facing
18:26in France,
18:27meaning that scaling the companies requires a lot of capital when the companies are not yet profitable.
18:33And so we need to develop local VCs that have big pockets to be able to invest in the Series
18:41B and later stages,
18:43so in the growth stages or in the late venture stages, to support the companies who want to grow global
18:49and who want to become big players.
18:52So for this stage of investment, I think both the Korean and the French VC market will have to support
18:59the creation of strong VCs who can accompany the companies at that time.
19:04We need to more exchange between the VC community as well.
19:10Obviously, especially the younger people in the audience, everyone knows Korean culture and is fascinated by it at the moment,
19:20be it BTS, music and TV series and cinema. I wondered to what extent it helped the Korean companies and
19:30startups go abroad.
19:32Yeah, thanks to the popularity of the K contents around the world, like the Squid Game and BTS.
19:41And everywhere we go, people recognize the Korean company and wants to make the connection with us.
19:49So that actually helps a lot for the Korean companies to go global and helps their marketing and talent kind
19:58of recruiting and so forth.
20:00Maybe you can talk about that as well.
20:03Well, it practically helped my company.
20:06Adriel has about 70 members and 10 out of 70 are French.
20:11And I cannot say that they came to Korea for BTS, but I think our culture being very global definitely
20:19interested a lot of people outside of Korea to come to Korea.
20:24And I'm having a job interview. I'm interviewing a candidate in Paris very soon.
20:29A lot of people want to come to Korea and work and that's the best way to attract talent.
20:35So I think that definitely helped us grow.
20:40I think that this policy was so successful, smart power was so successful, it should be studied in universities.
20:48Because, you know, I was Minister for Culture and I don't know any other example of a country that was
20:53able to decide and then to project and export its contents.
20:58And it was really a political decision. It's not by chance because Squid Game or BTS arrived or PSY a
21:04bit earlier.
21:05It was a decision made almost 30 to 40 years before that, you know, Korea had to really, you know,
21:11gain some self-esteem.
21:12No one knew anything about Korea 20, 30 years ago.
21:16And now look what happened. You open Netflix and you have a whole section with Korean contents. It's amazing.
21:21And so this, I think this success over the years and with different governments still continuing this policy, which is
21:28called HALU, so the Korean wave.
21:30So, you know, bringing the contents abroad and making your lifestyle and your country desirable.
21:36This is very powerful because it creates power. It's smart power. It's not just soft power. It's smart power because
21:43it's power of grain.
21:45So I think having this policy must have very positive outcome, you know, for all the rest of the economy.
21:52Not only tourism, not only cosmetics, but also for companies like Sophie's because it creates an interest.
21:58Oh, you're from Korea and people are interested now in learning more about the country.
22:03So this was one of the smartest examples of public-private policy carried out for a long period of time
22:09that has amazing effects on the whole economy of the country.
22:15Excellent. I think we are going to stop here. Thank you very much to the panel. And I hope you
22:23enjoy your day here at VivaTech. Thank you very much. Bye bye.
22:27Thank you very much.
22:28Any response to the panel? Thank you. Thank you very much.ม.
22:33şi
22:35Cool. Thank you
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