More than 100 students filled a seminar room in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences to hear from seasoned and successful entrepreneurs about their war stories. KIU hosted the event, ‘Entrepreneurship Festival’, to cultivate the entrepreneurial mindset of students across the KIU campus and help students navigate their way through startup challenges.

The first lecture was delivered by Cho Youn-Ha, CEO of Video Village that searches for and manages one-person media creators. He shared his story about how a 29-year old man built a startup, startup struggles and worries that attracted students’ attention.

He promoted his own business by meeting and persuading the same one-person media creators in person several times to join in his work at the beginning of the business. After three years of hard work, his business which started out with 5 employees, now has 23 employees. The channel that he operates has 130 million views per month. His startup story inspired students to pursue their dream of starting their own business.

He encouraged students to possess a great deal of experience before founding a startup because his diverse experience such as being a child actor, studying abroad, having employee experience, and etc. helped him think of solid startup ideas and turn them into a reality.

Following his lecture, 5 founders shared their experiences and lessons learned: Cho Youn-Ha (CEO of Video Village), Yang Joon-Cheol (CEO of Onoffmix), Kim Mi-Kyun (CEO of CIZION), Lee Don-Kwan (CEO of WOOSOO), and Kim Dong-Tak (CEO of INCORE).

Afterwards, the CEOs had time to talk with students about how they recruit, their thoughts about starting a startup without any prior experience of working in any company and so on. They ended up saying, “What recruiters care about is your genuine excitement and enthusiasm for the role more than your excellent resume. Thus, you, students, should build up skills and experience before starting your own business.

Kim Kwang-Ju(Vice President for Academic Affairs) said, “KIU won first place for excellence in entrepreneurship education in the JoongAng Ilbo’s comprehensive university rankings. I hope that students learn and identify risks and rewards entrepreneurs may face when starting a business from the event.”