Press

Moving Beyond Infrastructure Investment and Short-term Support: Broadening Youth Settlement-based Startup Opportunities as Key to Regional Regeneration Gunsan City, together with Gunsan University, provides ecosystem activation opportunities for existing and new entrepreneurs residing in Gunsan Underdogs, a startup education specialist company (CEO Kim Jung-heon, Jo Sang-rae), will continue regional regeneration projects achieved through 'Localize Gunsan' centered on Gunsan City and Gunsan University's Startup Support Division to activate Gunsan's startup ecosystem in 2022. Localize Gunsan is a regional regeneration project implemented based on fostering location-settled entrepreneurs conducted by Underdogs and SK E&S from 2019 to 2021. As major manufacturing factories supporting the local economy relocated, it was established to achieve sustainable regional activation in Gunsan, the only region in the nation simultaneously designated as both an employment crisis and industrial crisis area. Continued provision of startup education and workspace to selected startup teams, and presentation of collaborative content among startup teams are cited as success factors. Even after the Localize Gunsan project concludes, Underdogs continues regional regeneration through startup ecosystem activation. Key projects are 'Gunsan City Youth Startup Vivid Support Project' and 'Gunsan University Early-stage Startup Package Startup Club.' The Gunsan City Vivid Support Project is a startup education program to alleviate management burden for youth entrepreneurs under 7 years of startup, residing in Gunsan, who employ at least one person aged 19-39. Online and offline education and coaching will be provided to participants through March 2023. Through Gunsan University Startup Club, startup education composed of business model advancement and mentoring with senior entrepreneurs will be provided this year as a solution to youth decline and local university activation. The goal is to serve as a hub at Gunsan University to spread startup culture within campus and discover and nurture startup teams to advance in regional or national startup competitions. Underdogs also continues fostering startup teams discovered through the Localize Gunsan project. The cafe operation business on the first floor of Localize Town, previously provided to startup teams, was ultimately selected as the previously discovered startup team 'Flower Day Youth Craft Cooperative' through open recruitment, with plans to continue exchanges through work-cation programs and festival programs. Jo Sang-rae, CEO of Underdogs, stated, "Localize Gunsan demonstrated that startup education can be a new solution to population outflow and urban decline faced by our society," and added, "Underdogs will work to activate the startup ecosystem by presenting various projects that can expect synergistic effects between existing and new startup teams fostered over the past three years, along with Gunsan City and Gunsan University." Meanwhile, Underdogs recently introduced 'Localize Gunsan Archive,' a standalone publication that compresses solutions for regional regeneration through startup ecosystem creation, as the Localize Gunsan project with SK E&S concluded.