Press

Underdogs, a startup education specialist company, and the Yoon Min Chang Investment Foundation have joined hands to operate a youth entrepreneurship education program as their first project to discover and nurture startups. Underdogs and the Yoon Min Chang Investment Foundation will establish multi-faceted cooperation systems for a startup ecosystem specialized for teenagers and plan to promote joint projects accordingly. Through this collaboration, they plan to lead efforts to help teenagers explore various social issues, strengthen problem-solving skills, and develop competencies for conceptualizing and implementing ideas. As a first step, they will jointly conduct the 'Youth-Specialized Practical Entrepreneurship Methodology' education program in Cheonan and Jeju. The program will be offered to a total of 10 teams selected from 5 high school teams in each region interested in or hoping to start businesses, in the form of field practice and workshops. The education program was developed by former and current youth education experts and coaches from entrepreneurs based on Underdogs' practical coaching education and entrepreneurship methodology, and consists of social issue exploration, customer specification, startup idea creation based on solutions, expert feedback, business plan writing and presentation, and more. Since its founding in 2015, Underdogs has discovered and nurtured more than 10,000 entrepreneurs nationwide as of 2022, serving as a startup education specialist company. Recently, it has launched the 'Hana Social Venture University' supporting young people's employment and entrepreneurship in each region based on Hana Financial Group and 10 universities nationwide, the 'Underwoman Impact Community' supporting female entrepreneurs with Cartier, and the 'Local Food Branding School' supporting SMBs with Naver. The Yoon Min Chang Investment Foundation operates investment and acceleration of creative and innovative startups, as well as youth entrepreneurship education projects. In particular, it operates the 'Youth Challenge School,' an entrepreneurship education program for middle and high school students, which has fostered entrepreneurial spirit, creativity, and collaborative problem-solving capabilities in students from approximately 150 schools with a total of 33,000 teenagers. Jo Sang-rae, CEO of Underdogs, said, "Entrepreneurship education for teenagers not only helps strengthen the ability to solve problems from problem recognition to resolution, but also provides opportunities for various career exploration." He added, "Since Underdogs has been conducting entrepreneurship education specialized for various groups in our society, we will take the lead in building a startup ecosystem for teenagers." Sung Min-seop, Chairman of the Yoon Min Chang Investment Foundation, stated, "The foundation will continue to make efforts to spread youth entrepreneurship education that builds the strength to challenge based on creative ideas." He added, "Through our agreement with Underdogs, we look forward to activities for diverse talents."