Welcome
Today we are pleased to welcome Venture Capitalist,
Dr. Kim Jin-Soo,
who is actively engaged in early stage startup investment
Dr. Kim Jin-Soo is currently serving as
Managing Director at KT Investment
He has led investment in over 50 startups
with six of them
successfully going public and another six acquired by a bigger company
His main areas of focus are AI and robotics,
with primary investment focused on Series A and Series B stages
He is currently managing a portfolio of 40 startups
and is actively exploring
new and emerging sectors as well
From now on, the following discussion will be in Korean
with English subtitles available for international students
Are you ready? Let's begin
Hello, Dr
Thank you for being here today
Can you briefly introduce yourself?
Hello, this is Jinsoo Kim, Head of Investment at KT Investment
I've been working at Venture Capital for about 10 years
My main areas of investment are AI, robotics, and deep tech
I've invested in about 50 companies so far, and
I've invested about 1.5 billion won in total
I've invested in 6 companies, including IPO and M&A,
and now I'm investing in 5 companies as a unicorn
So, did you become an investor right after you graduated college?
I first joined KT,
and I worked in the new business or strategic sector for about 10 years
Oh, for 10 years?
Yes, and I heard that KT was going to make KT Investment,
so I joined as a startup member and it's been 10 years since then
Oh, so you joined KT first,
and then you became a general engineer?
Yes, I became a general engineer.
I worked in the new business or strategic sector,
and I wanted to work at Venture Capital,
so I heard that KT was going to make KT,
and I joined as a startup member
and it's been about 10 years since then
Oh, so you joined as a general engineer,
and you were mainly in charge of the new business,
and then this company, which wasn't there before,
suddenly became an investment department?
Yes, I created an investment company
You created an investment company?
Yes, I created Venture Capital
So you created Corporate Venture Capital, right?
Yes, that's right
Since you created Corporate Venture Capital,
you applied for funding and joined as a startup member
Yes
So is that company completely separate
from KT's head office?
Yes, it's completely separate, and we have 100% of the shares,
but we are a company that specializes in investment
Oh, so you don't have much relationship with KT's head office?
When we do fundraising,
KT receives about 20-30% of the money,
and we keep introducing KT to the companies we invest in
So we are now proceeding as a point of differentiation,
and we are doing things like connecting with KT while investing,
and creating a business channel
So, Venture Capital, Venture Capital List,
we call it an investment review station
You used to work at a company,
and now you are switching careers
Was there a special reason for switching careers?
Yes, KT had a program called
MIT Sloan's Visiting Fellow Program,
which was a 6-month course
I was selected by KT at that time,
and I didn't even know what Venture Capital was,
and I didn't even know what a startup was
But when I met MIT students and professors there,
I found that MIT had a great entrepreneurial spirit
All the courses were about entrepreneurship
so I took about two courses on entrepreneurship,
and I also joined a club for 6 months
So, a lot of people who were trying to start a business
talked about VC a lot
They bragged about meeting VC,
and I thought, what is this job?
I was very interested when I came back,
and when I heard that KT was making something like that,
I thought I should go
Then you came to KT,
and you happened to go to KT
because KT was making KT Investment
Can you briefly introduce what kind of company KT Investment is?
We are a 100% KT subsidiary
It's been about 10 years since it was established
We are mainly investing in deep tech fields such as AI and robots,
and the AUM, asset under management, is about 350 billion won
It's a medium-sized VC in Korea
Medium-sized?
Yes, it's a medium-sized VC
Then, you mentioned that you connect the startup
that you invest in with the main service of KT
How do you usually do it?
Isn't KT in the communication field?
Yes, but in fact, KT is a strong company in the communication field,
so we don't invest much in that field
Most of the time,
we invest in the new business that KT is mainly doing
But after 10 years of working,
we mainly invest in Series A, the early companies
But what KT wants is more than that
So we invest in the front row in advance,
and if the company is big enough,
we connect it to KT
So KT wants to go a little further, to the seed stage?
We invest in the early stage
Because we connect the early companies to KT,
KT requires more resources and more guarantees
We have 4-5 people in our team
But for startups,
it's actually 10 people out of 4-5 employees
That's what early companies do
So it wasn't easy for early companies to cooperate with KT
So we invest in the early companies,
and if the company has 50-100 people,
and if we go to Series B and C,
if we connect them,
both of them will have physical strength,
so I think there will be a better business synergy
Now, let's go back to the career side
What does a venture capitalist do?
There are 4 main tasks
4 tasks?
Yes
The first one is deal sourcing
We spend most of our time on this
We meet founders, go to them,
and do networking
So it's called deal sourcing to find a good startup
The second is investment
If we find a good company,
there is an investment committee inside
You have to pass this to invest
We prepare an investment committee,
write investment reports,
announce them,
and persuade the committee members
After the investment,
we do business management
We actively involve VCs in the companies we invest in
We meet the CEO regularly
and talk about the direction of the business
and the current problems
The last one is recovery
In Korea, there are three ways,
IPO, M&A, and resuscitation
I think VCs are good at recovery
We do these four tasks
Do you do this every day?
Most of the tasks are divided into two
One is to keep meeting and networking
to find a good company
The other is to keep meeting
and value-up the companies we invest in
This is the main task
The number of investments is event-based
I can't say that there are many in a row
It's hard to manage a company you've already invested in,
but I think it'll be really hard
to find a company you don't know
Do you have any know-hows or methods?
VCs are introduced or discovered
through various channels and networking
There are two types
One is to be introduced
and the other is to be actively studied and invested
Most of them are introduced by other investors,
such as accelerators,
early investors,
and other venture capitalists
Or they are introduced by their friends
or co-workers or experts
and invest in them
Some VCs study industry very hard
If you keep digging into AI or autonomous driving,
you'll find companies like that
So, you can actively discover them
and invest in them
Then, for example,
do you look for reports or professional magazines
and discover a company?
I do that a lot
I read a newspaper
and if I find a company I've invested in
or a very important event,
I just send a cold call
Do you send an email?
No, I don't send an email
I look for someone I know
and ask them to introduce me
In the past, I used to send a lot of emails
and send them to the CS center
But I couldn't get an answer
I was a bit of a noob
So, if I look for someone's resume,
whether it's a university or a job,
I can find something
Then, I look for my mutual friend
and ask him to introduce me
So, you look for someone
with a cold call
and put a report in the middle
Yes, that's the fastest way
to get feedback
I used to make a lot of phone calls
If I call any number or the company's number,
the CS staff would answer
So, if I ask the CEO to meet me,
the CS staff would be flustered
They'd say,
why would you meet the CEO?
Even if the investor calls?
Yes, because they don't know
So, the best thing is
that the person I know
introduces me the fastest
and I can meet him no matter what
So, you have to call
and ask all the people you know
Yes
But even if you do that,
there are times when there's no contact
Now, I've invested about 50 times
And as I've been doing it,
if I search for LinkedIn, Facebook, or X,
I can always find a mutual friend
So, there must be people
in remember app
Now, you can say
that you have a lot of big data
Yes, so if you want to meet someone,
you can meet one or two mutual friends
even if it's not in one step
If it's two steps, you can meet
So, other than studying
and meeting like that,
is there a case where you meet by chance?
Even if it's a coincidence,
there could be a case where you meet by chance
For example, you go to a gathering
and suddenly meet someone
Or if it's a coincidence,
there are cases like this
Let's say you're eating with a CEO or a friend,
and she says,
I'm using this solution these days,
and it's really good
If she say something like this,
I'm like, what's that company?
It's kind of like that in VC
Endless meetings make my all senses widely open
when you're in a meeting
So, if you hear that your company is good,
or that a company is unique,
if a CEO says something,
then you catch that
and investigate it again
If you want to meet,
you have to use all the media you got
So, you don't know what's going to happen,
so you can't ignore any information
You should always be interested and meet
So, when good companies come out of the meeting,
I write it down on a memo
and go home and look for what this person is doing,
investigate it,
find the network, and connect it
In that way
What if when you meet someone
and they're not ready to be invested,
or they don't have a reason to be invested,
or they want to be invested from somewhere else,
like, I don't think KT Investment
will suit our personality
I think there are times when they refuse
There are a lot of times
Oh, yeah?
So, when I first started VC,
I think I was rejected 80 to 90 percent
I think I was rejected almost 100 percent
Because the company is short-term,
and I haven't done anything,
there's no reason for the founders
to get it from me
Even if they are the ones who got an invest?
Right
So, I want to invest in a good company,
in order to invest in a good company,
So many good investors want to invest in them
So, they have to choose
among the good investors,
but the company is short-term,
and I'm short-term,
so they just drop it
saying I'm sorry
There are a lot of startups
who want to be invested
Yes
You don't go to those places
That's right
There are a lot of people
who want to get an invest from me,
but I don't want to invest in them
Oh, there's a mismatch
It's one sided
The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer
Yes
Then, the startups that are crowded,
the startups that you want to invest in,
do you think they'll do well?
I think there are typical companies
that I like
Yes
But each VC has a different personality,
so some people like them,
and some people don't like them
But when you look at the probability,
a good company has a high probability
when VS likes them
I think it's more than 50%
So, it's natural that you want to invest
in a good company
That's how the company grows
Then, you have to find out
if it's a good company first
Then, you would have searched
and met with the idea
that it would be good,
but is there a time when the judgment changes?
like, oh it's not what I think it is
There are a lot of times
In what cases?
I know well about the market,
so I don't get confused about the market,
but I don't know if the founder can do this
Oh, the founder?
Yes
So, there are a lot of cases
where I meet and I'm disappointed in the founder
Oh, in what cases are you disappointed?
They must be decent people too,
since they were probably featured in the newspapers and all
But the tech market is a very large market,
and there are quite a few cases
where I think the founder can't do this
Do you think they're not good enough?
Well, there's that,
and the index may not come out
as I expected
It's actually good in the newspaper,
but when I actually go in and look inside,
there's not much difference
There are a lot of times when I think
the founder can't do this
And nowadays, companies that have been invested
tend to get more investment
from the team rather than by themselves
Do you also prefer team start-ups?
I prefer it when I have a co-founder,
but that doesn't mean
that I invest only in the places
where there are co-founders
There are cases where I invest
in people who started alone
So, even if you start alone,
you need to prove your skills
rather than having a lot of people start up, right?
Yes, I think so
But usually, there are a lot of great people
who start up alone
Of course, there are great people
who start up with co-founders,
but if you look at the company,
it's mostly run by the CEO
But the fact that there are no co-founders
means that you have to do almost everything
from A to Z by yourself
Actually, there's no one
to share the burden
So, the more people start up by themselves,
the more they work hard and get stressed out
But they're doing alone cause they have confidence
Yes
Then, I heard that
you need a fund to invest, right?
Yes
But as you said earlier,
KT is the head office,
so KT supports about 20% to 30%
Where do the other 80% and 70% come from?
In Korea,
we usually get investment
from government-run investment institutions
For example, Motep Fund,
Korea Growth Finance,
or military-owned companies,
banks, and securities companies
We get the rest from government-run
and private institutions
Do you go there yourself?
Or do you get a notice from there?
Sometimes we get a notice,
and sometimes we go there
and get a pitching
So, you don't want to go there?
Yes
Is that possible?
Yes, it is
But you need to meet as many people as possible
To fundraise,
you need to meet LPs
They are called limited partners
If someone is an investor,
that can invest in a fund,
you will meet all of them
So, LPs are the people
who put money in the fund, right?
Yes, that's right
So, you go and meet them
Do they meet you?
Sometimes they don't
to make it possible,
I use all the network I got
They don't just meet me,
I have to find mutual friend
and say, I want to have a meal with him,
or I want to have a tea time with him
Like this, sometimes I need a middleman
and meet someone
That happens a lot
Now that I'm listening to you,
you have to pay attention to two things,
not one
Yes, that's right
You have to meet people who will give you a fund,
such as a military or a bank
You have to get money from them
so that you can invest
You have to meet them
And you have to find a good startup
so you have to meet them
You have to do these two things at the same time, right?
Yes, that's right
When you divide the work,
where do you focus more?
When I make a fund, I focus more on fundraising
Oh, you divide the time
Yes, I focus on fundraising
And when I don't fundraise,
for example, I make a fund every two or three years
When I make a fund, I focus on fundraising
When I don't make a fund, I focus on investing
That's what I do
Now that you're out of funds, once every three years,
when you make a fund,
You focus on fundraising
And when you make enough money,
you go out to find a company to invest in
If ou're interested in AI or robots
You meet them
And you decide
there's a possibility
So you invest in them
And then,
based on your decision,
you make a decision
First, I make a decision,
and then the investment committee decides
So you make a decision first,
and then the investment committee decides
But it's a prediction anyway
Yes
It's not a real conclusion
We said this company would be 10 times bigger
It could be bigger in reality
or it might not be that big
So how much is the success rate
of this prediction?
It's hard to say
For me,
I've invested about 50 times
and failed three times
The success rate is..
The success rate is not that high
But only 3 of them failed
Anyway, by the time the fund is liquidated,
the company should be attractive
enough for an IPO, M&A or a shareholder exit
From a venture capital firm's perspective,
there are still many companies that are up and running
There are quite a few companies
that are still operating but haven’t been successfully sold
Like a zombie, right?
Correct
Companies that are like zombies
So you failed only 3 times, including those things?
For now, yes
We’ve only liquidated three
I think it's a high success rate
Do you mean that good VCs are doing better?
I think that high-level VCs
can fail a lot
but also success a lot
Many of them are US companies
There are so many VCs in the U.S
Their success rate is
only 10%
But those 10% become thousand times multiplied
In fact,
they call it a tenbagger in the U.S
We earned more than ten times the investment amount-
that’s what we call a “tenbagger.”
The ability to identify and invest in that kind of company is crucial
Honestly, even if over 50% of the investments fail
having just two or three tenbaggers can generate tremendous overall returns
From the outside,
it might seem like getting tenfold return is just expected
after all, it’s a venture investment
But apparently, it’s not that easy. Right?
In Korea, it's especially difficult
In the U.S., take Scale AI for example
it was in the news recently
One of the early investors exited at $2.5 billion
That’s about 3 trillion KRW
They sold the company
to Meta for that amount
I’m not sure how much they invested,
but even if it was a lot, it was probably no more than 10 billion
In the U.S., you see a lot of those kinds of multiples
But in Korea, the IPO market itself is relatively small
Even after going public, companies are often valued at around 200 to 300 billion KRW
That makes it really difficult to achieve multiples higher than five times
So in Korea, having the ability to avoid failure is already a very important skill
At the same time, making investments
that can generate those high multiples is also critically important
Then, have there been any cases where you decided not to invest
because it didn’t seem like the right fit at the time
but the company ended up becoming a huge success later on?
One notable example is Moloco
a promising company
founded by a Korean CEO in the U.S
The company is called ADTEC
The valuation is 4-5 billion Korean won
The valuation is 6-7 trillion Korean won
In the private market
It is very famous, many U.S company invested in them
We evaluated that company
at around 100 billion KRW
100 billion KRW?
Yes, I even went to Stanford in the U.S
The company was in front of Standford
I liked them to be honest
Then I did a reference check
all the results were so bad
Investors in U.S and all the ADTEC related workers
They were all so negative about that company
Why?
From their perspective, the advertising industry is
basically a people-driven sales business
but Moloco was a company that sold technology
rather than relying on traditional sales methods
Because of that, advertising companies in Korea felt
"They don't even do sales, so why should we use their service?"
Something like this
As a result, the company struggled for a while
During COVID-19,
gaming companies started using extensively,
which led to a huge surge in their revenue
But the lesson learned for me was
that I shouldn't rely too much on
the references from the experts
I don't know much about the advertising market,
so I asked the people who work in advertising
about the company's references
The existing players don't have any interest in this small company
and don't think much about the business
But after 6-7 years,
even if the advertising company is big,
the largest label in Korea is about 1,500-2,000 billion won
But the company's last value is 6-7 trillion won,
so there's no difference
Of course, it's a global company
Do you regret it?
I regret it a lot
If I had done it,
it would have been 50 times better
If I had done it, it would have been great
It's such a waste
Lastly, many students want to enter the VC industry
is watching this video
Do you have any advice for them?
There aren't many students who want to enter
the VC industry right away
They usually build their career at work for 3-5 years
and then move on to VC
When we recruit VCs,
the people we meet are all CEOs
So it's weird for a college student
to meet a CEO and talk about something
So I built a lot of experience in one field
And when you join VC,
you come in as a networking
So in order to get around,
you need to know a lot of venture capital around you
There are a lot of cases where you are introduced to them
You have a lot of expertise
If you make a network that's close to venture capital around you,
I think you'll have more opportunities
Do you recruit interns?
I often recruit interns
But being an intern
doesn't mean they can become a full time position
Right
Yes
Thank you for your time today
It was a great and interesting conversation
Thank you
We hope today's conversation was very helpful for
startups, seeking investment
and students aiming to become investors
Thank you for watching