What entrepreneurs need to know about investors
A must-read for any entrepreneur preparing to attract investment!

"Startup Investment Attraction: A Funding Guide from a VC with a Founding Background" is a practical guide for entrepreneurs who are new to attracting investment.
This book contains the vivid on-site stories of Mashup Ventures CEO Lee Taek-kyung, who has experience as both an entrepreneur and an investor, including co-founding Daum, angel investment, and venture capitalist, the 20 years of know-how of Korea Venture Investment, which has played a central role in the Korean venture investment ecosystem, and the expertise of Startup Alliance, which represents the voice of the startup scene.

This book, written in collaboration with leading organizations in the Korean startup ecosystem, provides a realistic and concrete guide to every step of the investment attraction process, covering what's important in investment meetings, how investors view entrepreneurs, and what entrepreneurs need to prepare for successful investment attraction.
This book will serve as a helpful guide for early-stage startups preparing to attract investment, reducing unnecessary trial and error.

What Investors Consider

Even if a startup is outstanding, investors will usually have different preferences.
This is because investment philosophies and investment tendencies differ across investment firms, and even within the same investment firm, investment criteria differ slightly depending on individual partners and reviewers.
So, it is not easy to generalize and say, “That investment firm invests in this type of startup.”

However, when I examine the factors I consider as an early-stage investor when reviewing investments, and the factors that subsequent investors consider when raising follow-up investments for their portfolio companies, while individual investors vary, most tend to consider two major factors: "team" and "market."
Early-stage investors often focus on the "team" aspect, although they also consider the "market," as startups often lack meaningful metrics and unproven hypotheses.
And as we go further back, we tend to consider the 'market' a little more carefully, although we also look at the 'team' based on various indicators of the startup.
Additionally, because early-stage startups often carry a higher level of investment risk, early investors tend to look for one or two compelling reasons to invest.
So, while it's necessary to defend against weaknesses, a strategy that appeals to your clear strengths may be better.
On the other hand, as later investors focus on minimizing investment risks, protecting against downsides becomes more important.

Investing isn't gambling, but the initial investment is a bit like being dealt one or two cards in a poker game and having to decide whether to bet or not.
While later-stage investors receive more cards, seed investors are given just one card to decide whether to invest, pre-Series A investors are given two cards, and Series A investors are given three. Let's start with the first consideration, which can be considered one or two cards: the "team."

Investors love this type of team.

For early-stage startups that haven't yet raised funding, the team's importance becomes even more crucial, as they often have fewer meaningful metrics and sometimes need to adjust their business models.
Investors consider the following factors when evaluating a team: co-founders and key members (especially the CEO), and the weighting of each factor varies from investor to investor.
We primarily make decisions through meetings with the team, but we also use reputation check information as a supplement.
And for later investors, as the startup organization grows, we sometimes conduct individual interviews with key members.

The size and obsession of dreams

Investors comprehensively consider the co-founders' lives, values, how they came together, why they started their business, their dreams, and their sincerity.

It's not just about simple greed, but also the size of the team's dream and the intensity of their determination to achieve it that matters.
I've actually experienced many instances where the bigger the dreams and stronger the will of the CEO and co-founders, the more likely they are to persevere through the difficult situations they encounter while starting a business without giving up.
The size of your dream also has a bearing on how big your startup will grow in the future.
Even if the market is large, if the dream is small, even if it succeeds, the scale may not meet investors' expectations.

Communication skills, learning skills, and execution skills

Communication skills, in the sense of “the ability to convey accurate information and be persuasive,” rather than “fluent speech,” are extremely important.
Even if a leader's individual abilities are outstanding, work efficiency in an organization that requires collaboration is bound to decline without smooth communication.
Especially in the case of a leader who is distrustful of others and stubborn, the organization's growth is limited because he or she has to handle all major tasks on his or her own.
Leadership, talent acquisition, sales, building external partnerships, and attracting investment are all closely related to communication skills.

And while the current capabilities of the core members are important, what's even more important is their willingness to learn and their ability to learn quickly, by first recognizing what they don't know and what they lack.
CEOs and co-founders must acquire a wide range of management knowledge, and must quickly learn through trial and error in real-world experience, not just from textbooks.

Ultimately, the success of a business depends on its execution.
Even if you have a great business plan, if you just think about it and talk about it but don't put it into action, it's all meaningless.
As the saying goes, “Think big, start small, scale fast!”54, rather than just sitting at your desk and thinking about it, you need to get out into the field and quickly improve your business model.

[case]

When I was considering investing in Shifty, which provides an integrated attendance management solution, what impressed me most was its rapid learning ability and its ability to execute without preconceived notions of the market, taking the initiative and identifying customer needs one by one.
Based on the strengths of these teams, we made subsequent investments.

--- From the text