Korea Adds 300 Pitch Sessions for Unfunded Founders, With One Pick per Round

A Door Only for Founders Who Have Never Raised

Korea’s Ministry of SMEs and Startups starts its Challenge IR Project on September 16. The entry requirement is the absence of a track record: the program is for tech founders with a concrete business plan who have never raised money from an institutional investor. Both pre-founders and CEOs of existing startups can apply.

On the investor side, the gateway is TIPS, Korea’s Tech Incubator Program for Startups. Under TIPS, private operators select promising tech startups and invest in them, and the government links R&D and commercialization funding to that investment. For this program, 142 TIPS operators will hold more than 300 in-person investor pitch sessions before the end of the year.

One question the announcement leaves open is whether a team that has taken money only from individuals, such as angel investors, qualifies. That is worth confirming in the platform’s notice before applying.

One Pick, Starting 9 a.m. on September 15

The core track is operator-run pitching. Each operator designs its own format, from one-on-one meetings to open pitches, and runs a first round in October and a second in November. Submissions go through the Challenge IR platform (irchallenge.jointips.or.kr), which opens to founders at 9 a.m. on September 15 for the October round.

The rules are short. A founder can submit to only one operator per round. When an operator hits the intake cap it has set, its first-round intake closes. Operators then choose which founders to invite to in-person sessions and notify them through the platform at least seven days before the event.

That makes the choice of operator as important as the deck. Submitting to an operator whose focus doesn’t match uses up the round, and because intake closes once a cap is reached, waiting narrows the list of operators still open. The schedule for second-round submissions was not part of this announcement.

Other Programs Feed Into the Same Pipeline

Several other routes are attached. The first is a link to the Everyone’s Startup Project, a separate government program that drew more than 63,000 applicants in its first edition. The 500 people who reached round two of its general and technology tracks can join with a recommendation from their incubator and will be matched with a TIPS operator suited to their idea.

Regional events continue as well. Welcome to TIPS, held every year since 2017 in five regions (the capital area, Dongnam, Chungcheong, Honam and Daegyeong), expands this year to North Jeolla, Gangwon and Jeju. Top companies there get priority for Pre-TIPS, which gives promising startups outside the capital area up to 100 million won in commercialization funding. With Korea’s four science and technology institutes, the ministry will also hold Startup City IR events in Daegu, Daejeon, Gwangju and Ulsan, connecting faculty and student founders recommended by those institutes with operators.

By sector, startups picked through the cross-ministry K-Startup of the Year competition get pitch sessions organized by the special leagues of nine ministries. In defense, media, maritime and R&D, sessions are tied to each ministry’s own startup support programs. Companies that actually raise money through the project get extra points and other preferences when they apply for TIPS.

Early-Stage Money Rose While Early Rounds Fell

The first-half numbers looked healthy. In the ministry’s August 19 venture investment report, investment in companies three years old or younger reached 1.8282 trillion won, up 56.4% year over year, and the number of those companies that raised money rose from 499 to 643, an increase of 28.9%.

Private data tells a different story. Figures released on July 1 by THE VC, a Korean startup investment data platform, show first-half early-stage rounds falling 16.9% year over year to 368. The average early-stage round rose 90.2% to 7.22 billion won, and the average seed round jumped 175.6% to 3.65 billion won. AI and robotics took 91.5% of seed funding.

The two datasets use different scopes and criteria, so they cannot be merged into a single figure. What THE VC’s numbers do show is early money concentrating into fewer, larger rounds. The ministry’s stated reason for the program is that founders lacked the networks and information to get in front of investors.

Because operators design their own formats, it is worth checking whether an operator runs one-on-one meetings or open pitches before submitting. The ministry says it will review this year’s results and gather feedback before deciding whether to turn the project into a standing investment support system. Until then, the confirmed windows are the October and November rounds.