Naver’s insight and support measures for startups were extraordinary. As a result of investing in 70 early-stage startups over the past six years since launch, their corporate value has grown significantly to the current total of 1.3 trillion won. Naver plans to continue supporting startups in the future, and in particular, plans to provide a separate space for startups on one floor in its second office building, which is scheduled to be completed within the year. Naver startup development organization D2SF announced at the ‘Naver Meetup’ held online on the 8th that it had invested a total of 40 billion won in 70 startups over the six years since its launch in May 2015. According to Naver, at the time of investment, these companies were early-stage technology startups that had just been founded or were about to be founded, but six years later, their corporate value has increased by an average of six times, reaching a total of 1.3 trillion won. In addition, the total investment amount reached 337.8 billion won. For 65% of invested startups, the partner that attracted the first investment after establishment was D2SF. Even though 80% of startups in the B2B field take a long time to generate stable sales, the overall survival rate is 99% and the success rate in attracting follow-up investment is 70%.
Naver D2SF leader Sang-Hwan Yang said, “Rather than focusing on immediate business feasibility, we have continued to invest based on how excellent the technology is, what business areas it will be applied to, and ultimately how it can grow through synergy with Naver services.” He explained, “Many of these companies have quickly advanced their technology after investing in D2SF and have been recognized for their competitiveness in the global market.” In addition, thanks to these efforts, the perception that ‘D2SF investment = technological capabilities and value guarantee’ was created. The most representative example is ‘Furiosa AI’, an artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor company that recently attracted 80 billion won worth of investment, the largest amount among domestic semiconductor startups. Baek Jun-ho, CEO of Furiosa AI, said, “Due to the nature of semiconductor development, it requires a long time and a lot of manpower investment, but in 2017, when we had not even established a corporation, the only investor who sympathized with our vision and supported our vision was Naver D2SF.” He added, “That is the value of the technology.” , a partner that understands well the difficulties of technology startups, and attracting investment from Naver D2SF means receiving certification from Naver’s outstanding technology experts.”
In addition, Desilo, which is developing a machine learning solution based on homomorphic encryption technology, also took first place in the homomorphic encryption category at iDash, an academic conference in the security field. Bering Lab, an AI-based legal/patent translation startup, is also attracting attention by taking first place in the ‘Word-Level Post-editing Effort’ category at WMT2020 (International Machine Translation Training Competition). Naver emphasized that D2SF is not just an investor, but a ‘coordinator’ that connects Naver’s various organizations and startups so that technology startups can grow substantially. In fact, over the past six years, there are about 670 startups that have directly or indirectly interacted with each organization within Naver through D2SF. Additionally, as a result of D2SF’s own survey of 818 startups last year, the number one item most expected from D2SF was ‘exchange and cooperation with Naver.’ Leader Yang said, “71% of the investment team succeeded in finding a point of contact with Naver and are discussing specific cooperation,” and added, “We have consistently created opportunities for exchange between startups and Naver’s various technology and service organizations, which have led to actual cooperation and tangible results.” “We are seeing results,” he said. For example, Morai, an autonomous driving startup that attracted D2SF investment shortly after its founding, built an autonomous driving simulator using data from Naver Labs, and Naver Labs used this to develop an advanced autonomous driving system into the road autonomous robot platform ‘ALT’. ) was mounted on.
From Naver’s perspective, it quickly advanced its technology and service quality, and from the startup’s perspective, it created a ‘win-win effect’ by securing references in the early stages and growing quickly. There are many examples of exchanges between Naver and startups leading to mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Representative examples include Company AI, an AI chatbot modeling startup acquired by Naver in 2017, Buzz Music acquired by Snow in 2019, and V.do, a startup acquired by Naver Webtoon last year. It is evaluated that new growth possibilities have been created for domestic technology startups, where M&A cases are rare. In addition to Naver and technology startups, synergies between technology startups are also gradually increasing. Minwoo Park, CEO of Crowdworks, said, “We have been collaborating with Naver on AI data collection and processing projects such as Clova and Papago right after investing in D2SF. Based on references with Naver, we have secured numerous domestic AI companies as customers, and the D2SF startup community. “We were able to meet a significant number of customers and partners,” he said.
In addition, Naver announced plans to provide a separate space for startups on one floor in its second headquarters, which is scheduled to be completed within the year. This is to encourage greater growth through experimentation and exchange between Naver and startups.
Leader Yang said, “The space dedicated to startups to be prepared in the second building will be ‘Collaboration.’“Under the concept, it contains the meaning of growing together in a space where walls are broken down,” he said. “In the world’s first robot-friendly building, we will be able to exchange new stimulation and face greater opportunities for growth.”
Source: Pangyo Techno Valley Official Newsroom
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