Mentors are drawing attention as the hidden contributor to the second venture boom. A senior entrepreneur who led the venture boom in the early 2000s is becoming a guide to junior entrepreneurs who have been in the "Death Valley" for three to five years.

The venture industry considers the venture boom in the early 2000s and the most changed appearance of the present as various start-up support activities. A typical phenomenon is that senior entrepreneurs with various experiences participate in angel investments, accelerators, and mentoring systems to support younger entrepreneurs.

As a result, the number of start-ups that have slowed down in the past 10 years has increased significantly in recent years. The number of venture companies has exceeded 30,000 and the newly formed venture funds are expected to exceed 3 trillion won this year.

4STEC, which was established in 2013, is a solution company that develops RFID (Automatic Recognition Technology). Seungwon Lee, CEO of 4STEC, started the business after receiving technology transfer before closing the business at his previous job, LNISoft.

Thanks to technology transfer, sales have occurred since the first year of the business. It was Lee Jung-ha, a mentor at the Incheon Center for Creative Economy and Innovation who helped Lee, who passed his first or second year and became CEO for the third year. The mentor, who first started his career at the Daewoo Information System in the late 1990s, had experience in trying to start an IT business with his motivation at work in 2000.

CEO Lee and mentor Lee had various conversations before Angel Investment, not only understanding venture capital but also establishing business models.

"In the mentoring process, we exchanged numerous questions from the perspective of consumers and investors and reflected them in our design and investment strategies," CEO Lee said. "We can look at the business objectively, not from the supplier's perspective." Despite the recession, 4STEC is expected to double its sales from last year to 1 billion won.

Some questions to the founder discourage them. However, encouragement based on experience is the opposite. Mentors share wisdom, not knowledge.

Kim Da-young, CEO of Hanbyul, who majored in pure art at university, started her own business while working in construction. It has developed eco-friendly non-toxic special blocks without cement. Kim met Choi Yong-joo, a mentor at the Gyeongnam Center for Creative Economy and Innovation, and received a father-like support.

CEO Kim participated in a start-up competition involving 6,500 startups and climbed to 20th place. Choi Yong-joo, a mentor, advised him to prepare a business plan, dress up for presentation, and look at the project. Hanbyul expected sales of 1.2 billion won this year, which has more than tripled compared to the previous year.

The mentor system is also changing as the start-up environment has matured quantitatively and qualitatively. There are also programs that help develop mentors' abilities through systematic education and support, rather than advice limited to personal experience.

A representative example is the Venture Business Association's 'Creative Diversity Program'. It minimizes arbitrary experiences and judgments and fosters mentors that can actually help start-ups.

Entrepreneurship, latest software trends and management methods, technology trends, etc. are continuously provided to lectures and mentors, and development plans are studied through various mentoring case analysis. It is also an educational model that mentors felt and demanded on the spot.

"Talking to companies through personal experience can lead to wrong directions," mentor Lee Jung-ha said. "We are trying to share information generated from objective help and collective intelligence through mentoring research."

Press Date: December 25, 2016

Source: http://www.etnews.com/20161223000380

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