Korean startup CEOs away from home lead global expedition

South Korea’s promising startup founders, who normally double as chief executive officers for their companies, are leaving their home turf to find new opportunities in foreign countries with more relaxed regulations.

“I now have a clearer picture of what to do and how to do it since I've relocated overseas,” said Kim Taesu, the founder and chief executive officer of Neosapience Inc., a Korean startup developing artificial intelligence-powered voice actors. “New opportunities spring up just because a founder is staying in the US.”

Kim left Korea in September last year to discover new markets in the US.

Kim is one of a growing number of Korean startup founder-CEOs making a second home base overseas.

Doctornow Inc., Hyperithm Inc., Karrot’s Danggeun Market Inc. and Upstage have all sent their chiefs or co-chiefs abroad.

This is a new trend gaining traction in the Korean startup sector as a more effective way to venture into overseas markets, according to industry experts.

“Creating new markets abroad is a very challenging project that could fail even with the company’s utmost efforts,” said an official from the Korean startup industry. “If you leave this job to one of your employees, it would be nearly impossible for them to get the job done because they usually have less urgency or desperation.”  

This is why Korean startup founder-CEOs, the top stakeholders of the company, are moving to their future markets, industry experts said. 

The CEOs can also take care of any overseas emergency more promptly and actively build a broad network with other entrepreneurs from diverse countries, a major asset to their businesses down the road. 

KARROT LEADS THE WAY

It was the founder of Danggeun Market, the operator of hyperlocal marketplace and community app Karrot, who paved the way for this new trend in the Korean startup sector.

The Korean startup made inroads into the UK in November 2019 as KARROT, its first overseas operation. At that time, the Karrot app’s monthly active users topped 5 million in Korea.

About a year later, the app landed in Canada, the US and Japan in phases.

To orchestrate its offshore operations, Danggeun Market founder and CEO Kim Yong-hyun, known as Gary Kim overseas, moved to Canada in 2022.

Since his relocation, Karrot's Canadian operation has performed the best among its other overseas operations. Karrot ranked fifth and seventh on Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store, respectively, among free downloads in the country.

NO PROBLEM WITH RUNNING 'TWO HOMES'

Doctornow founder and CEO Jang Jiho moved to Japan to lead the Korean telemedicine startup’s Japanese operation set up in February.

He decided to move to Japan in desperation after witnessing the rapidly shrinking non-contact medical platform market in Korea after the end of the pandemic, which put an end to online services for users’ first-time examinations, said an official from Doctornow.

Korea also bans medicine delivery, which hamstrings Doctornow’s domestic operations.

Jang is committed to a mission to grow Doctornow’s business in Japan with its business know-how earned during the COVID-19 at home, the company official said.

Korean AI startup Upstage in March also set up a US entity and appointed its co-founder and Chief Science Officer Park Eunjeong as the CEO of the US operation.

Upstage CEO Kim Seong-hoon and Chief Technology Officer Lee Hwalsuk have been spending most of their time in the US these days to win orders for Upstage's new large language model Solar Mini (sLLM), which has been launched in North America through Amazon Web Services.  

Lee Wonjun, the founder and CEO of digital asset manager Hyperithm, is headquartered in Japan.

Since the early stages of the startup's inception in 2018, Lee has been leading the company’s Tokyo and Seoul offices from Japan's capital.

He has been actively investing in blockchain startups from Japan as the country has more relaxed regulations in digital assets than Korea. It is also easier to raise funds, Lee said.

“We plan to form a new fund with an investment worth more than 100 billion won ($72.4 million) from a Japanese company,” said Lee.

Despite the absence of these CEOs in Seoul, their Korean head offices managed by other executives are running smoothly thanks to online remote tools.

“I take care of Silicon Valley jobs during regular working hours here in the US and then those in Seoul after 6 p.m.,” said Neosapience CEO Kim. “It is possible to run ‘two homes’ if you are a bit more diligent.”

Write to Joo-Wan Kim at kjwan@hankyung.com

Sookyung Seo edited this article.