How to Start a Start-up in POSTECH
How to Start a Start-up in POSTECH
  • Reporter Lee Il-bong
  • 승인 2015.11.04 16:04
  • 댓글 0
이 기사를 공유합니다

Start-up is a dream or future for someone, while it remains vague to others. President Doh-Yeon Kim mentioned the importance of “start-up” in his inauguration speech, and Choi Yanghee, the Minister of Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, recently visited C5 and APGC-Lab building. It shows how university and the whole country focus on start-up in POSTECH.  Information of the other universities was provided by interview in writings with relevant university start-up managers, and information about POSTECH is from the interview with APGC-Lab and Business Incubation Center (BIC).
GIST's center for it has existed since the 90s, but the major programs have been made since 2013. They established the courses for General Education related to entrepreneurship and start-ups, so that all members can experience it. They have two mock start-up programs. One focuses on specifying the start-up ideas, and the other one evaluates the marketability and technology of each start-up.
KAIST has one of the most well-ordered start-up supporting systems in Korea. Its history starts from the 80s, and numerous well-known companies were born in KAIST. They hold various lectures from famous entrepreneurs, and have well-organized mentorship programs, and various start-up competitions.
Hanyang University and SNU ranked 1st and 2nd place respectively on the number of venture founders, according to Joongang Daily on Oct. 22. These universities have distinct start-up ecosystems produced by their alumni. It’s similar to APGC in POSTECH. It encourages young students to approach start-ups easily and provides proper aids in the initial stage of start-ups.        
The processes of start-up in POSTECH are conducted by the whole departments of Administration for Business Development, including APGC-Lab and BIC. The system was built in 2012, with the newly appointed head of BIC, Professor Sungjin Park (ME), who was a member of POSTECH’s 1st graduates class. APGC-Lab was established at that time and started its career last year. Their program, “Tech+ star” supports start-ups giving financial aids and advice, and “Tech+ innovation” provides Postechians an opportunity to experience the real company works from APGC. BIC described the future POSTECH unique start-up ecosystem, and said “Failure is allowed, keep challenge against the failure, and seniors give consequent feedbacks to juniors. Virtuous cycle blooms in POSTECH.”
Visible results have already appeared. Each semester, 7 to 8 teams have benefited from the programs mentioned above. This is considerable growth considering that there were only one to three new start-up teams each year before the establishment of APGC-Lab. To quote APGC-Lab’s motto, “Engineering’s basic idea is to adapt proper technology to help people prosper human life.” Thus, engineering’s starting point is none other than start-ups. May the members of POSTECH use their valuable ideas to develop something that helps people prosper.