On February 7, 2022, shortly after I had linked the inbound investment review proposal to Slack, I received a review request from a place called 'L.L.H.R., Inc.'. Looking at the content, leaving behind the incomprehensible corporate name, I saw that the team, which looked very young, including three graduates of Minjok History High School, had the ambition to start with luxury goods repair and innovate the secondary luxury goods market. That's how my first relationship with the Papis team began. Despite the seemingly small size of the luxury repair business, the team's almost non-existent experience, and sometimes immature communication methods, the CEO's big dream, passion (or forearm muscle), and the way he grew throughout the review process led to a bet that 'I want to be with this team in 5 years'. After the investment, there were twists and turns in the closing process where the CEO said he would take money from other investors, not the base, but fortunately, he believed in his words that 'we will definitely be the most helpful shareholders for the growth of Papis', and we have been together for about a year and a half since then. However, it was not as smooth as I thought. We focused on branding while the product was not complete, and since we had no experience in making a proper product, the improvement speed was slow, some co-founders left, and growth stopped. To be honest, in cases like this, many VCs lower their expectations more and more. In a situation where we have to continuously discover new companies and manage aftercare while our resources are limited, it is realistically more effective to focus on caring for portfolio companies that seem to have more potential. And honestly, even if we care and help, it is obvious that it will only be at the level of nagging. It was Pappys, and I was really happy to see that the product experience was incomparably better than when I invested while repairing New Balance products two weeks ago. The team created a revenue model in a few weeks and achieved BEP, while countless competing services disappeared. The team's expressions, which had been filled with a sense of inferiority, are gradually becoming more confident, and they are preparing to go after something beyond repairs. What changes have there been? In a situation where the growth of the invested team is stagnant, the biggest difference in bass is the presence of HR Manager Choi Purun, including Growth Partner Lee Taeyang, Growth Advisors who have worked on leading unicorn startups, and management who have directly operated startups, that is, bassists. We will introduce how these bassists have been playing together for our VIP vocalists through a review article by CEO Kim Jeongmin of Papice. Before we get into it - The unknown corporate name 'LLHR' stands for 'Low Risk High Return'. I believe the team will definitely do it. [The story of Pappys, which succeeded in turning a profit by meeting a VC who is consistent with his words and actions] Anyone can say something flashy. In the end, what matters is whether your words and your actions match. For startups and VCs, “walking the talk” is increasingly important. Just as startups need to draw a vision for the future and realize that vision step by step, I believe that VCs also need to prove their investment methods and vision through actual decision-making and portfolio management after investment. "If startups are vocalists, we are the bassists. "We will be your partner who provides the best rhythm and beats to vocalists."

This article was written by our intern, Chanwoong Park, who has worked with us for the past six months. Mr. Chan-Woong Park led the college student support project with a sincere heart for entrepreneurship, and always impressed us and the entrepreneurship team with his sincere research. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Mr. Chan-Woong Park for his great help to us. Does that make sense? Can you do it? This is what someone said to me, who dreams of starting a business. I have had dreams and goals of starting a business since high school. In the military, I formed a team with five KAIST seniors and juniors and challenged myself to start a business for a year and a half. I used all my free time, including personal maintenance, vacations, going out, and overnight stays, to develop a construction equipment sharing platform and technology, and even verified it in the actual market. However, during the process of starting a business, the words people threw at me stabbed me like a dagger. As I thought, 'Can I do this now?', my confidence gradually faded. But what I heard from the base was different. What is more important than the startup idea is who does it and how . What is more important than your current abilities is how big your dreams are and how persistently you pursue them . The words of CEO Shin Yoon-ho of Base had a special resonance for me. I was convinced that I would be able to grow greatly if I worked with this base, so I applied to be an intern. Thankfully, I was able to join the investment team as an intern right after my military service. The most meaningful thing for me in the past six months was that I took the lead in the <University Student Entrepreneur Support Project>. What we believe Base believes that more outstanding college student entrepreneurs will emerge from Korea in the future. College entrepreneurs are relatively lacking in practical and organizational experience and social assets. It is an innate weakness. However, they have overflowing passion and energy. They try to break away from existing stereotypes. They have an instinctive understanding of new trends. Above all, they can have big dreams that others may see as unrealistic. They can be persistently immersed in order to achieve big goals. From the perspective of 'who does what', Base believes that college entrepreneurs can create great growth. Base wants to start with college student entrepreneurs and grow together with them. Just like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had Sheryl Sandberg (a working mom of two who successfully introduced the advertising business model to Facebook when it had no revenue model and turned it into a profitable company), and Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page had Eric Schmidt (Google's senior who grew Google from a young startup to the world's best mobile company). I want to be a social asset to college student entrepreneurs and a helper who can fill in what they lack.

If you were to pick the hottest theme in the global stock market recently, you couldn't leave out 'robots'. As labor shortages and rising labor costs worsen worldwide, demand for robots, a representative form of automated equipment, has begun to explode. Advances in element technologies such as AI and sensors, as well as the continued decline in robot prices, are also driving solid demand. Now, we can say that 'the era has arrived where companies must use robots to survive.' Contoro Robotics (hereinafter referred to as 'Contoro'), located in Austin, Texas, USA, is an early-stage startup that is following this trend. It solves the labor shortage in labor-intensive industries such as logistics, agriculture, and service industries by utilizing artificial intelligence robot arms and teleoperation technology. So, what do you mean by why you shouldn't invest? Here are five reasons why you shouldn't invest in Contoro. And there are also reasons why you should invest in it anyway. 5 Reasons Why You Should Not Invest High difficulty domain There is a saying that 'If you want to invest well, you should invest in a field that you know well'. The first domain that Contoro chose was the US logistics industry. US (physically distant) + logistics industry (especially container/truck unloading) + robotics (plus AI and teleoperation combined) = How many people in Korea know these three things well? I can confidently say that it is a very small minority. (First of all, it wasn't me ㅠㅠ) A strong competitor As the market is large, fierce competition is expected. There are companies such as Boston Dynamics, a robotics company with a long history, and Pickle Robot, an MIT spin-off startup. They have been developing an unloading robot for 2-3 years and are finally on the verge of commercialization. Underdog Compared to its strong competitors, Contoro is a clear underdog. First of all, it is a startup led by a Korean founder. It would be difficult to say that it is 'advantageous' in the US (especially in fundraising). Today, many Korean founders are making meaningful achievements in Silicon Valley and other places, but there are still not many Korean companies listed on NASDAQ. Solutions not yet proven The team must validate the hypothesis through PoC and commercialize it. The robots will perform tasks in the irregular environment of the distribution center, and sometimes the operator will have to control multiple robots remotely. It is very likely that unexpected problems will be encountered during this user journey. It will not be an easy journey. The stock market is too hot(?)

The startup with the highest valuation in the world for several years is SpaceX. Despite the ups and downs of the market, the ranking remains solid. A company led by the outstanding entrepreneur and manager Musk, creating the fastest and most innovative milestones in the extreme high-tech field of rockets. SpaceX is the most advanced, but no one knows whether it will be the final winner of the space industry. In order to match stability and cost to a reasonable level, enormous technological development is required. Commercialization is only the beginning, so it is currently in the preparation stage for a large business. I think that the reason that even contemporary giants such as Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson have devoted the rest of their lives to the space field is because they have captured endless business opportunities in this context. In Korea, we decided to get our feet wet in the space industry by investing in startups that are just starting out. At first glance, it seems like a very reckless attempt, but in reality, it is not at all like that. If a good investment is the product of high probability and big impact, I am convinced that this investment has many elements that can make it a very good investment. The first reason is the historical context of manufacturing and the unique characteristics of Korea as a country, and the second is the confidence that CEO Park Jae-hong is a great founder who can fully embody this. Through the Industrial Revolution and Fordism, mass production based on large-scale capital investment and efficient engineering has become the mainstream paradigm for most industries. Naturally, the companies that led this paradigm in each field received the highest corporate value at the time (Rockefeller's Standard Oil, Carnegie's US Steel, Henry Ford's Ford, Edison's GE, etc.), but almost none of them have maintained that position even after a century. The variables of technology, management, and new markets opened a window of opportunity for latecomers, and entrepreneurs with full ability and will seized the opportunity and took the throne. In particular, I think the rise of China in the 2000s showed how significant manufacturing hegemony is even in the Internet age. But in all of this, it is regrettable that Korea and Korean companies are playing supporting roles. In most (manufacturing) industries, Korean companies are still showing the best competitiveness in the global top-tier, and they have in common that they have achieved the fastest catch-up in an environment where capital and technology were virtually non-existent. In short, the development of modern industry can be said to be the process of the success of the West blossoming in the East, and Korea can be said to be playing a leading role in this 'economics of catching up'. And one of the hottest industries in the West right now is the space industry, and I think the same context can be applied to this industry as well. The reason is people. The factor that made this myth of catching up possible is people more than anything else. Outstanding entrepreneurs and excellent personnel made the impossible mission a reality. The story of Chung Ju-yung, who used a single banknote with a turtle ship image as leverage to win an order from a major ship owner in a situation where he didn't even have a proper shipyard, and succeeded in building and delivering the company with other people's money through loans and loans, and the story of Lee Byung-chul, who overcame a 30-year technology gap solely with talent in the semiconductor industry where the technology gap more than doubles every two years, are familiar to us, but wouldn't it be more reasonable to dismiss them as hallucinations if someone from abroad heard about them?