SEOUL, November 04 (AJP) - Alumni and professors at Kookmin University's entrepreneurship graduate school have pooled money into a startup fund to teach venture investing by having students do it.
Kookmin University's Graduate School of Global Entrepreneurship and Venture said Wednesday that 45 people had committed 1.001 billion won ($746,000) to Bugak Startup Innovation Fund No. 1. The backers include the school's alumni association president, graduates, doctoral students in entrepreneurship and faculty members, with individual commitments ranging from a few million won to 100 million won.
The school is registering the fund with the Ministry of SMEs and Startups as an individual investment association, a partnership through which private investors pool money to back startups. It is the first fund the school has raised from its alumni network since it opened in 2014.
The school said every member can join review meetings where candidate companies are examined and discussed, regardless of how much money they put in.
Members will also attend sessions called Bugak Angel Rounds, where founders present their business plans and investors trade views on whether to back them. Afterward, investors can compare their own judgment with the final decisions made by the people managing the fund.
Those managers, known as general partners, are alumni investment professionals, angel investment specialists and the Korea Angel Investment Association. General partners run a fund and make its final investment calls, while the other members supply most of the capital.
According to the school, this is the first time in South Korea that the association has served as a co-general partner of a university alumni fund. The association will handle registration, accounting and reporting.
The school and the association signed an agreement in August to carry out joint research on angel investment and technology startups.
A faculty committee chaired by Kim Jong-taek, who directs the school's MBA program, will review how the fund is run on a regular basis.
The school is also considering linking the fund to courses such as Startup Investment Theory, so that live deals become teaching material.
Most of the money will go to promising startups outside the university. Companies founded by Kookmin faculty and student teams on campus may also receive funding, but only when an outside investor joins the same deal, a rule the school said would keep its reviews objective.
The graduate school trains specialists in startup incubation and investment, entrepreneurship education and corporate venturing.
Dean Lee Woo-jin said the goal was "to learn the investment process and gain experience together through a fund that alumni finance and alumni run, and to produce real results."
The school plans to hold a launch ceremony and its first Bugak Angel Round once registration is complete, and will start investing after that.
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