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This article was written by Taehyun Kang, an intern who has worked with us for the past six months.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Taehyun Kang, who has been a very solid practical backup in a rapidly changing organization and has always been a great help in our growth with his progressive ideas and quick execution capabilities.
Hello, I am Taehyun Kang, an investment team intern at BASS Ventures.
As I wrap up my short but long six-month internship, I would like to introduce one of the projects I led and carried out during my stay at the base. It is about BASS Ventures' perspective on 'student entrepreneurs' and an attempt to make the base itself a social asset for such entrepreneurs.
Is it difficult for students to start a business?
Lack of practical experience and social assets are often cited as reasons why it is difficult for students to start a business. It is not easy for college students to acquire business skills that can be learned from the professional world or experiences within a significant-sized organization. In addition, they inevitably lack social assets that can be accumulated after starting their social life as adults. The social assets mentioned here refer to networks or mentors, and since a great mission can only be achieved as a team, the initial social assets of entrepreneurs are inevitably important.
Nevertheless, among the places we are familiar with, there are many great founders who started their companies while they were college students and built great companies. Apple and Microsoft in the 70s, Dell and Cisco in the 80s, Google and Yahoo in the 90s, Facebook and Dropbox in the 2000s, and Stripe and Snapchat in the 2010s . Behind these great companies, there were excellent but very young founders. However, we must not forget that behind these great companies, there were people who not only provided financial support but also filled in the lack of experience and social assets. For example, Cisco had Don Valentine and John Moggridge, Google had John Doerr and Eric Schmidt, and Facebook had Peter Thiel and Sheryl Sandberg. They showed outstanding presence in the process of growing great companies from the founder’s ingenious 0 to 1 process to the 1 to 100 process. Finding PMF may be a matter of luck, but creating a great company is entirely a matter of ability.
(Eric Schmidt, who had a huge influence on the early Google founders and business)
Looking at these cases, BASS Ventures had been thinking , 'If it's difficult for students to start a business, can't we help young entrepreneurs?' and I was able to join the base at that time.
Trial and Base
Before joining Base, I was the president of a university entrepreneurship society, and I was able to feel the thirst and needs of college students who dream of starting a business or are actually starting a business. Since I felt that most of the thirst and needs I encountered were due to a lack of social assets, I thought about how I could provide real value to the members while they were active. As a result, since I had nothing I could directly provide to them, I tried various methods to provide opportunities for social asset connections and relationships to be formed .
So, last summer, I planned and hosted a college student entrepreneurship conference where entrepreneurship groups and members of the entrepreneurship ecosystem from various schools could interact, and with the support of many VCs, I was able to achieve significant results in terms of securing social assets for student entrepreneurs.
And after the conference, I became interested in places that can continuously provide this social asset, namely VC. I thought that if I could better understand VC's motivation, resources, working methods, and members, student entrepreneurs, VCs, and myself could all achieve meaningful results , and so I joined BASS Ventures, which I was most curious about while attending the conference, as a good opportunity.
(Literally 'attempt', Karl Shin (CEO) participated as a judge.)
Student Entrepreneurs and House’s Joint Growth
When I was preparing for the conference, I didn't have much to offer directly, but after joining Base , I was able to try various connections with student entrepreneurs by utilizing the infrastructure of the house. I knew very well what student entrepreneurs needed, and Base was enough to 'fill social assets for student entrepreneurs', and I reached out with the thought that 'I can connect them'.
I brought up “Connection between Base and Student Entrepreneurs” as an agenda for the 1 on 1 meeting I had with Karl Shin (CEO) every Monday morning, and since Karl Shin (CEO) also recognized the connection with student entrepreneurs as an important, although not urgent, task, various plans and attempts were quickly put into action. Among the things Karl Shin (CEO) said, I especially remember the following : “Very early-stage investment is a bet on the growth of the founder, but aren’t student entrepreneurs the ones with the greatest potential for growth?”
So we set some goals. We wanted to create a permanent connection between the base and the student entrepreneurs that would provide practical help to the student entrepreneurs, that would be aligned with the interests of the house, and that would be sustainable even if the project manager changed, and ultimately, we wanted to create a permanent connection between the base and the student entrepreneurs. And through this, we wanted to get more student entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs to know about the base and knock on our door over time.
After setting these goals, I brainstormed with Karl Shin (CEO) for several weeks about an action plan. We met countless student entrepreneurs together, listened to their voices, and shared our thoughts. We worked hard regardless of the means and methods, time and place, from weekdays and weekends, in-person and remotely, in small groups of 5 or so to groups of 70 students. As a result, we carried out 17 linked projects in the form of lectures, office hours, judging, and event sponsorship for 12 college student entrepreneurship groups . It was a process of increasing the resolution of the persona of a 'student entrepreneur' through discussions on various topics such as entrepreneurship, investment, career, team building, and concerns of entrepreneurship clubs, and it was an experience in which the student entrepreneurs, the base, and myself all grew, just as I had originally intended .
(SNUSV x INSIDERS Joint Demo Day Awards Ceremony, BASS VenturesAward Ceremony)
(Karl Shin (CEO)'s FOUNDERS session, 'Why are you an entrepreneur?')
I hope to become the biggest and closest social asset for student entrepreneurs.
The successful student startup cases mentioned above were able to sprout in the soil of the United States, which is rich in social assets (student entrepreneur-friendly), as the seeds of entrepreneurial excellence. In Korea, more and more senior entrepreneurs and VCs are starting to support student entrepreneurs, and the ecosystem is maturing as various successful cases and startup content that we can easily access are accumulating. I think that more great companies will be created by students in this flow. Hot passion and enthusiasm, thinking outside the box, and sensitivity to new trends are strengths that only student entrepreneurs have.
This is the first step toward connecting with student entrepreneurs that has been put off for a while, but it will require much more time and effort in the future. And this project will have to go through many iterations and trial and error to establish itself as a system, and we will have to continue to think about how the base can become a more practical and unique social asset for student entrepreneurs. However, after working together for the past six months, I have felt with my whole body that BASS Ventures is an organization that is evolving like crazy, and I am convinced that the base will continue to be the closest to students who dream bigger, take on more challenges, and achieve greater results .
I am grateful to have been a part of many positive changes during the past six months as an intern. During this period, Partner Taeyang Lee, a former co-founder of Toss, CMO of Zigzag Alex Kim, and COO Eunseon Shin of Ridi joined us, and we also prepared a space for very early-stage portfolio companies or prospective entrepreneurs who need office space. I was able to meet amazing entrepreneurs every day, and I felt that I had grown so much. I would like to express my gratitude to the members of Base who entrusted me with this project and supported me with valuable resources despite their busy schedules, so that I could achieve my wish of creating something that would not have existed without me in this rapidly changing house. I hope that BASS Ventures will continue to be the most reliable social asset for student entrepreneurs, and that many student entrepreneurs will knock on Base’s door .
(Back to school, but with a bass hood!)
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