Increasing number celebrities are becoming a Tech-Celestor (Technology, Celebrity, Investor). As start-up companies need an 'Angelic' investments, Pangyo Techno Valley helps firms to get investment and also investors to get to know about sparkling ideas.
Six-digit
paychecks of the football players and movie stars don’t automatically guarantee
their post-retirement future. Hence their choice to invest in an attempt to
prepare for the last quarter of their famed life, especially tech ventures.
NBA superstar
Stephen Curry, Billboard frequent Lady Gaga, Kanye West, and the Grammy winner
DiCaprio are the famous “start-up” investors.
Korean sports stars such as Park Chan-ho (who played in MLB), and Lee Dong-guk (who played in EPL) are the well-known start-up investors, and they have invested in companies with remarkable ideas in Pangyo Techno Valley.
Ashton Kutcher is one of them, but he is an “angel investor” to be specific. From which virtue of
his investment do we assume it to be angelic?
The incubation
phases of start-ups are shown in the image below.
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ⓒ Kmuehmel (wikimedia commons) |
New companies face
difficulties earning investments. All they have is a piece of sparkling idea,
which may or may not solve the great concerns around the world, but which still
needs to be proven by running a short-term pilot project, or by building a
proof of concept. Usually, the one with the idea affords the cost by the means
of their own savings, or some help from their family and friends.
With the “proof”
found in the phase aforementioned, now the prototyping is in need to be
performed. We can think of it as a beta phase of a service or a product,
which means testing the idea by actually turning the idea into a visible form,
such as by building a prototype, or by running a demonstration phase of a
service. This is where it starts to cost a lot.
Once the idea has
gained enough interest and participation of investors, it is easier from now
on. A series of big investments by Venture Capitalists (VC),
banks, and even by merger with another form or a bigger one, the idea thrills
to be actually producing value, usually confirming their growth by appearing on
the stock market.
Still, most of the
ideas with a big dream of becoming available on the stock market needs help.
According to Forbes, 90% of the startups are left stuck at the bottom of the death
valley, far before the actual realization of their dreams. The deadliness of the
aforementioned valley is caused by the companies gaining stability over time,
but not to the extent of winning the interest of the investors. The companies
are not at fault for themselves being equivocal in terms of investment values.
Earning small seed-investments from their acquaintances, or even the local
government programs, might have been easy, but not so with the banks seeking
only for the freshest, or biggest of the challengers. Until recently in 2017,
62% of the tech venture in Korea closed down in just 3 years.
Angel investors
pull the new companies with fresh ideas out of the valley of death. It is
something the bigger investment organizations cannot perform, as the angel
investment occurs in a relatively small form.
The number of
these tech angel investors is on the increase, but one’s future and retirement
plan shall not be handled by a bandwagon. Gyeonggi Center for Creative Economy
and Innovation and Gyeonggi Content Agency provides angel investor training
programs which is held in Pyangyo Techno Valley, giving the angels-to-be a
chance to have a glimpse on what it would like to be actually helping the great
minds in desperate needs.
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| GCCEI and GCON provide a space for the start-ups and training programs for the 'angel investors' ⓒ 달콤한나의도시 (Naver Blog) |
Pangyo Techno Valley
is a home for many start-ups that can possibly lead the future industry and due to the high chance of closing down of
these companies, Gyeonggi-do tries to find a way for them to survive the
toughest stage of the company lifetime.
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