‘Startups for All’ should not become an overhyped event… a review of the startup ecosystem comes first

‘The era of national entrepreneurship’expectations and concerns

A Demo Day hosted by D.CAMP is being held at BEXCO in Busan in October 2024. With this event, the series of regional Demo Days came to an end. Kyunghyang Shinmun reference material

A ‘public startup audition’ open to everyone nationwideAn uproar after information on thousands of successful applicants was leakedThe Ministry of SMEs and Startups, rushing ahead, exposed weaknessesThe risk of devolving into a ‘showcase event’ is also a problemThe startup sector warns of a ‘wrong signal’Learning entrepreneurship through the experience of failurePositive reviews as well for cooperation with private institutions

“The key players to overcome K-shaped growth are startups and venture companies that will generate new growth engines through relentless innovation.”

President Lee Jae Myung expressed a strong commitment to fostering startups during his New Year’s press conference in January. Soon after, a plan for a 150 trillion won National Growth Fund was announced, and a call for entries for ‘Startups for All’ began, proclaiming an era in which anyone in the country could start a business with a single idea. On the 16th, a kickoff ceremony was held after narrowing down 5,000 people from 63,000 applicants. However, in the startup industry there were many concerns that a nationwide boom-up event could instead disrupt the private ecosystem. Hence the lament of “what was bound to happen has happened” over the leak of the personal information and ideas of 5,000 people immediately after the first ‘Startups for All’ cohort’s kickoff ceremony.

Can ‘Startups for All’ serve as the primer that realizes the government’s intent to open a ‘national entrepreneurship era’? Or will it end as a one-off, noisy event? As calls grow to channel record-high tax revenuesgenerated by the semiconductor boominto a fund to invest in the future, voices are urging a comprehensive health check of the startup ecosystem.

An era when everyone starts a business

As of 2025, there are 27 unicorns (large startups valued at 1 trillion won) recognized by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups. These include Toss, Yeogi Eottae, Kurly, Yanolja, Musinsa, and Korea Information & Data. None of them began with a meticulously crafted plan from the outset.

Viva Republica’s Toss, which started with 50 million won in capital, went through eight failures over three years. The app initially envisioned was a social media service that recorded offline meetups and shared them with friends. When the public showed little interest, the team pivoted to a mobile app for posting opinions and voting. The response remained lukewarm. Four team members then went out into the streets to collect ideas themselves, gathering over 100 in a month. One of those ideas was simple money transfer. In the book , Toss recalls, “We did not aim to be a fintech startup from the beginning. We simply listed items that the public would likely enjoy because we did not want to fail any longer, and simple transfers and payments were on that list.”

The simple transfer service started with the question, “Why is making a single transfer so complicated?” Persistent efforts to solve small questions and everyday inconveniences created a new company. This is the startup model that ‘Startups for All’ aspires to.

‘Startups for All’ is a public startup audition open to the entire nation. It is easy to understand as a variation on an idol open audition. Applicants who pass the initial screening compete through a mix of public and private auditions each round, with a final winner selected. The winner can receive up to 1 billion won in prize money. The program is divided into two tracks, ‘General/Technology’ and ‘Local’. In the document-based idea screening, 4,000 and 1,000 people are selected in each track respectively, for a total of 5,000. However, the personal information, idea summaries, and reviewers’ comments of these 5,000 successful applicants were leaked. In other words, before Round 1 even began, credibility took a major hit. The Ministry of SMEs and Startups issued a public apology in a briefing on the 22nd, underscoring the gravity of the situation.

Within the startup sector, many call it a disaster foretold. As the Ministry of SMEs and Startups rushed the event, signs of poor preparation surfaced in various places. ‘Startups for All’ drew 63,000 applicants, leaving 58,000 unsuccessful. “I understand that some judges were identified and received many complaints from rejected applicants along the lines of, ‘What do you know about my idea?’” said one industry insider, adding, “While anyone can participate, that can have the opposite effect of alienating those who seriously consider starting a company, which is why many in the startup community were critical.”

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups said it would offer re-challenge mentoring to rejected applicants and announce the selection for ‘Startups for All 2’ next month. However, due to the leak, that schedule has been put on hold.

In the wake of the leak, startup community figures voiced a range of opinions on social media. Kim Tae-yong, CEO of EO Studio, wrote on his Facebook, “‘Startups for All’ has truly made the startup ideas of ‘Startups for All’ everyone’s property,” adding, “Public initiatives may look good, but how do they ruin the ecosystem?” He cited a past case in which an attempt to launch a global startup conference turned into free admission once the government joined, driving away potential customers and talent, and ultimately devolving into a headline-chasing event attended only by the event organizer and government officials. Jeon Jeong-hwan, vice president of Krypton, wrote on Facebookemphasizing this was his personal view“What I regret most is the promotional message that reads as if anyone can easily start a business with just a single line of idea, and that a mentor will help you advance to the next audition round,” adding, “When this is combined with competition in an audition format and the online disclosure of the mentoring process, I believed it could send a signal at odds with the direction the startup ecosystem should pursue.” The concern is that a nationwide audition-type event could, rather than spreading startup culture as the government hopes, devolve into a showcase and end up disrupting the startup ecosystem.

Many also view it positively that, unlike previous government-led startup policies, ‘Startups for All’ is working actively with private incubators. The very act of matching participants with mentors or mentoring institutionspeople and organizations they would otherwise struggle to meetcan itself be a significant experience. Thee are 190 mentoring institutions, including accelerators, venture capital (VC) firms, and universities, and 4,166 mentors.

Kim Han-joon of Altos Ventures wrote on Facebook, “It is arrogant to judge that some people are qualified to start a business and others must not,” adding, “Most will fail, but that in itself is a good experience, and those who want to try should be encouraged by the government.” Choi Kwang-seon, CEO of The Innovators, which operates ‘Startups for All’, also wrote on social media, “Through ‘Startups for All’, nationwide entrepreneurshipthat is, entrepreneurship literacyshould be established, and even if not immediately, the environment should evolve so that people can start businesses whenever they identify needs and solutions the market truly demands.”

Lessons from the drift of ‘D.CAMP’

Amid ‘Startups for All’, which involves most of the country’s leading startup incubators, one conspicuously absent institution is D.CAMP, the Banks Foundation for Young Entrepreneurs. Established in 2012 with 845 billion won contributed by 19 domestic financial institutions, D.CAMP, together with the Asan Nanum Foundation’s ‘MARU’, was one of the two pillars supporting very early-stage startups. D-Day, held by D.CAMP since shortly after its founding, garnered attention as a debut stage for nascent startups, contributing to discovering prospective founders and spreading startup culture. “Given its founding mission, D.CAMP should be the most active participant in ‘Startups for All’,” said Yang Kyung-joon, CEO of Krypton. “One of the major pillars investing in very early-stage startups is missing.”

Declaring ‘D.CAMP 2.0’ to support more vetted companies, D.CAMP abruptly discontinued D-Day last year after holding it monthly for 11 years. It also halted its student startup program and closed its Busan Lounge, a non-capital regional initiative. Instead, it now runs quarterly ‘batches’ for startups beyond the very early stagepre-A to Series A (valuations under 40 billion won)and is strengthening mentoring, direct investment, and follow-on investment linkage for them. In effect, it shifted roles from providing infrastructure to being a market player. The ‘Startups for All’ organizers asked D.CAMP to join, but it reportedly refused, saying it did not have the capacity to provide mentors or mentoring for prospective founders.

D.CAMP’s sudden strategic shift has sparked controversy internally. Last month, D.CAMP employees formed a union for the first time in the foundation’s 14-year history. Allegations have arisen that changes in D.CAMP’s investment direction were not properly reported to the board and proceeded non-transparently, and additional allegations of misconduct by the CEO have led to an internal audit. Many in the startup community say that if even a highly public-interest organization like D.CAMP shifts to a profitability-first stance, it will be difficult to spread and entrench startup culture even with government involvement. Eom Jung-han, a partner patent attorney at Curious Patent Law Office, said, “To revitalize startups, we need to approach this with an industrial-infrastructure perspective,” adding, “We also need to improve startup exits, not only in the early stages of founding but also through the revitalization of mergers and acquisitions (M&A).”

Park Byung-Ryul, Economics Editor