Lee Gyu-lee is a business writer at The Korea Times, focusing primarily on IT & telecommunications, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and KOTRA. Prior to this, she has covered a wide range of cultural news, from film, television and K-pop to lifestyle and fashion.
Naver backs startups targeting North American market
Naver D2SF head Yang Sang-hwan speaks during a press event at its office in Gangnam District, Seoul. Courtesy of Naver
By Lee Gyu-lee
Naver’s in-house corporate venture capital D2SF shared its forthcoming direction to contributing to Korea’s startup ecosystem, vowing to assist up-and-coming startups in entering the North American market.
Since launching in 2015, the venture capital has invested in 115 startups across various industries including artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, blockchain and health care.
Despite focusing on early-stage companies in seed or Series A funding rounds, D2SF has achieved a 96 percent survival rate among its portfolio firms, helping nurture promising startups such as chipmaker FuriosaAI, which drew global attention after turning down a takeover bid from Meta.
"We’ve been working to find companies that can create new frontiers and to grow together globally," Naver D2SF Head Yang Sang-hwan said during a press event in southern Seoul.
"We wanted to establish a bridgehead for startups to enter the North American market, and introduce good startups in North America into the Korean market to diversify its ecosystem."
D2SF said it is committed to creating greater value for its portfolio startups beyond simply providing funding, by offering design and marketing consulting, building a startup community and exploring synergy with Naver.
The combined value of the startups it invested in has now reached 5.2 trillion won ($3.68 billion), and there are over 220 collaboration projects with Naver.
Celebrating its 10th anniversary, Yang said the venture capital wants to use its experiences accumulated during the period to support startups, contributing to setting up grounds in more resourceful and lucrative markets. It opened D2SF U.S. in Silicon Valley last October, and Yang said his team is currently preparing a growth project to provide support for them to access more capital and resources.
"Recently, there's a lot of talk about how difficult the Korean startup ecosystem is, but looking back, just 10 or 15 years ago, it only had two players: entrepreneurs and financial resources," he said.
"Now, we have media playing a crucial role in enriching the startup agenda… and industrial capital from large corporations, like D2SF... We want to continue contributing to the startup ecosystem by building experience through taking a long-term view and taking differentiating approaches."