Smartphone application is the first choice for entrepreneurship

Jay Mok's family was shocked: 29-year-old, Young, just married, graduated from Seoul first-class University, in a multinational consulting company has a good job, his career is to let him proud of the source, but he resolutely resigned, his savings poured into the development of a smartphone application.


"The older generation doesn't have as much knowledge of it or mobile business as we do," he says. "They think if I fail, the whole family will be finished." "A group of young entrepreneurs scattered around the Seoul Jiangnan District, where skyscrapers and trendy shoppers are everywhere, are trying to make up for the lack of innovative start-ups in South Korea," he said.     They gather in borrowed houses or rented offices and are starting various software companies, in which the initial costs are lower than in other industries and are not dominated by the country's powerful "chaebol" conglomerates. Although Korean companies such as Samsung Electronics or Hyundai Motor (Hyundai motor) are often portrayed abroad as a dynamic up-and-comer, they have played a pivotal role in the country's economy for decades, like other chaebol, in South Korea. Experts fear that South Korea's prosperity has made the younger generation less entrepreneurial than the modern founder Ju (Chung Ju-yung), Ju from a poor peasant into a big entrepreneur, as a microcosm of South Korea's development path.


     but Jiangnan District's software entrepreneurs say these fears are inadequate. "More than 95% of our users are outside of Korea," says Jay Mok, referring to his application and letting users record their daily activities. The app, which has been promoted as a private log rather than a social tool, is recorded rather than shared, which he believes is a blank spot in the marketplace.      The app currently has 10,000 users, and its developers expect the number of users to reach 200,000 this year. But Jay Mok and co-founder Daniel Zhao, who created Weplanet, had to deal with other annoying things in addition to his parents ' suspicions. Financing is a thorny issue for South Korean entrepreneurs, where the venture capital industry is small and banks are more willing to lend to the chaebol. The two founders used the 150,000-dollar savings they had previously served in the consulting industry.      But they also received external support. The 42-year-old entrepreneur, Jimmy Kim (Jimmy Kim, see above) and two friends created Sparklabs last year to provide financing for start-ups and advice from a global consultancy network. Sparklabs's founder had made a fortune through High-tech start-ups: Kim had helped create a game company Nexon, and then created Innotive, which produced management software for big businesses. But they are well aware of the obstacles that others face.      Gold says bankruptcy law, for example, is a bit scary. "(In the past), if you go bankrupt in Korea, you almost become a criminal." In South Korea there is a famous saying that entrepreneurs are real patriots because they are really taking risks in their lives. "     Sparklabs has hatched 16 start-ups, offering 25,000 of billions of dollars per business and advice from mentors, including executives from foreign companies such as Google, Nike and Deloitte (Deloitte). The involvement of these foreign executives reflects a growing interest in South Korea's software industry, as well as a very high level of smartphone use and mobile internet speed in Korea. "When I traveled in the US, Hong Kong and Singapore, people were very curious about South Korean start-ups," Kim said, referring to "the rise of Nexon, KakaoTalk and (software group) NHN, and the synergy of global brands such as Samsung and LG ... Korean pop music also works wonders for companies, "he added, referring to the success of the Korean music industry overseas.      The other start-up for hatching is Knowre, which is made up of 3 engineering professionalsGraduates of the industry and a management consultant were created, inspired by the Hagwon (college) of after-school tutoring institutions that most Korean schoolchildren attend. Computer programs, they say, can provide a more playful and successful way to help children learn math. "We want it to feel like a video game," said Simon Kim, co-founder of      Simon Kim. "On a screen he showed, the user was crossing a wooded terrain. As they put their programs into development, they set up their own hagwon to study the target market and raise money. Finally, they conclude: South Korean parents ' attachment to the Hagwon system means that their projects have little chance of success in South Korea in the short term, but they see better prospects in the United States.      Early last year, their plans attracted 400,000 of dollars in investment from angel investors in South Korea and the US. A few months later, they received a $1.3 million trillion investment from SoftBank, a Japanese telecoms group, which was recently named the best class application in the New York City Bureau of Education competition. Knowre is expected to make a profit for the first time next year.      However, future Thinknet, the head of the Research Institute, warns that South Korea's environment is still bad for entrepreneurs. Too many of those who support start-ups, he says, are holding on to short-term lenders rather than being prepared to be long-term investors, meaning they scare entrepreneurs, distract them, and hinder them from creating sustainable values. In addition, he adds, successive governments have done too little to help start-ups get on the international scene.      As a cautionary tale, Lee Kark-bum mentioned the cyworld of social networking sites that had been popular in the 2003. The company lost its independence after the company's owner sold it to SK Group, one of the South Korean chaebol, although it had about 20 million users in 2006, but the fact that Cyworld's failure to expand overseas was a drag on its domestic performance. "They failed to overcome the English barrier," Lee Kark-bum said. And the domestic market is too small.      However, the rise of smartphones presents new opportunities. The Instant Messaging service, created in early 2010, is now being used by most Korean smartphone users, with a 100 million KakaoTalk last week. The environment for start-ups is improving, but there is a long way to go, says Lee Sir-goo, the company's joint chief executive. "Venture capital investors are growing, but unless you have collateral, banks won't lend to start-ups," he says.For IT services like ours, some regulations make it difficult to provide services. In the United States, credit card payments are relatively easy, but here, users must enter full credit card information for each transaction.      He added that previous South Korean governments ' measures to prop up start-ups were often flawed and that help for start-ups often came with harsh conditions.      However, Jay Mok says the prospects for some of the measures promised by the new South Korean government are promising. "Before last year, the government was focused on building start-ups rather than helping them grow," he said. The new government seems to have learned this lesson. "    " Many of my friends want to work for startups. The younger generation is completely different from the older generation. We are less loyal to big companies. ”