Press

If someone asks you, 'Why start a business locally?', I begin by saying it's a land of opportunity. Currently, the most critical issue at the national level is the decline of local regions. Young people are migrating to the Seoul metropolitan area for various reasons including jobs, culture, and education. In contrast to the fierce competition in the saturated metropolitan area, the decline of local regions is becoming increasingly severe. In other words, local areas—referred to as regions, non-metropolitan areas—still have many untapped or underdeveloped content. If you pay attention and take interest, you can create unique content that's exclusively yours, making it truly a land of opportunity. For these reasons, the government is providing various support to explore directions for local development through local creators. While local entrepreneurship is trending, survival in local startups is truly not easy. If local entrepreneurs had to name one thing they consider important for surviving locally, it would be 'community.' From a local entrepreneur's perspective, community is a space to find people you can collaborate with immediately tomorrow. It's also a place where people meet who are solving the same local problems in different ways. In other words, community is both the key to business and a land of opportunity. This community shares business cards with one another, maintains contact based on the exchanged information, and continuously pursues coexistence centered on the local area and mutual growth. It was 2020 when I first started a business in the Gwangju region of Jeollanamdo. I was knocking on doors at various institutions through entrepreneurs I met via community to get help launching my service. Then, I learned that one institution was looking for an entrepreneur operating a community-type regional hobby platform service suitable for COVID-19 circumstances—exactly what I was operating. That opportunity turned into a business deal, allowing us to find the answers we each sought while gaining collaboration and revenue-generating opportunities. Startup growth is impossible alone, and this is even more true at the initial stages. It's common to need others to solve problems you can't handle yourself, and others possess infrastructure you don't have. Community is a place where people share necessary help and talents, pursue coexistence, and ultimately exercise the power of collective intelligence that allows survival. Currently, I'm building a cultural and artistic community through a regional platform. By uncovering cultural and artistic content that hadn't surfaced before and bringing it to light, I've shown that local cultural ecosystems can develop through quality cultural experiences and information exchange within the region. In July 2022, a Summer Check-in flea market hosted by our community in a small space attracted 3,000 visitors over two days, which also significantly boosted economic output for the local entrepreneurs who participated. As a result, the platform has grown to become known by 1 in 10 women in their 20s and 30s working in the region, growing and thriving together with cultural and artistic figures within the community. As I've grown the community to this stage, I've often felt closedness in cultural and artistic exchange within the region. For the local startup ecosystem to develop further, rather than viewing each other as competitors, we need to see ourselves as fellow entrepreneurs pursuing shared growth and make efforts to form active communities. If people are unwilling to share their information and content, their opportunities to reach the market become limited. Remember that community is where opportunity is created through people connecting with people. Even if immediate results don't materialize, sharing, connection, and interaction are a 'survival strategy' that can create opportunities you never know when might arrive. By Kim Jong-eon, CEO of Moram Platform in Gwangju, Jeollanamdo Hello. I'm Kim Jong-eon, CEO of Moram Platform Co., Ltd., which discovers cultural and artistic content in local areas and offers a reservation and payment app service connecting artists with consumers. As I develop startup ventures in local regions, I'm also active as an Underdogs Coach to contribute to a broader and healthier startup ecosystem. ※ Local Game Changer is a local press corps jointly operated by Startup Recipe and Underdogs, introducing various voices from regional startup ecosystems. Local Game Changer In 2015, we started entrepreneurship education with the aim of 'discovering good entrepreneur colleagues,' and transformed the one-directional lecture-centered entrepreneurship education landscape into practical coaching education. As a result, as of 2022, we have produced over 10,000 entrepreneurship education students from 'Underdogs Alumni' across the country. We believe that advancing the world to a better place is 'innovation,' and that innovation is born through 'entrepreneurs.'