The fourth-week of the ‘TIPS Global Pre-accelerator 2021’ held on August 12, was all about Team Building. Ten Korean startups selected for the program learned various aspects about team building from Buddy Rathmell, an expert in team-building and leadership who is passionate about helping startup founders achieve success. In an all-online session, Buddy
shared essential strategies, tips, and advice to startups, followed by a round of questions and answers regarding the subject.

The six-week program ‘TIPS Global Pre-accelerator 2021’,organized by Korea Business Angels Association is held from July 22 to August 26, 2021, with a combination of offline/online sessions. The program will prepare the 10 early-stage startups for overseas expansion, setting up countries, establishing strategies for advancement, creating IR decks, and practicing pitching in English.

Startups learn about hiring, mis-hiring & leadership skills

The fourth-week workshop was an interactive session led by Buddy Rathmell. Buddy is
a US-based investor at 4BAM and has expertise in Leadership Development,
Strategic Planning and has been a consultant for many successful businesses. He started off the session by asking the participants about their experiences in team building. He then shared stories and examples of team building from the corporate world and his experiences.

Buddy advised the startups about best ways to find teams overseas, like in the US, etc., so as to get business success. He emphasized how mis-hiring can be a costly affair, and hence, startups need to pay attention to the hiring process. Buddy encouraged the startups to create a better workplace to retain talent and work on leadership skills. In the second half of the workshop, the ten startups shared their ideas and presented their products and services to Buddy as he evaluated their team building, marketing, sales activities.

The ten startups, which are participating in the ‘TIPS Global Pre-accelerator 2021’ are as follows:

1. Deepscent: The startup provides custom scented services through Fragrance On-Demand (FoD) technology. It combines customer scent preference data accumulated from FoD services with IoT smart home, olfactory environmental data, and biometric data to expand its service to (1)B2C smart home FoD service (2)B2B Fragrance as a service (FaaS) service (3)FoD sleep care service.
2. Deep Hearing:It has AI-based technology to make a speech, sound clear even in a noisy atmosphere. The startup provides voice enhancement solutions to manufacturing and service companies such as video conferencing platforms, mobile phone providers, and tablet PC manufacturers.
3. Mirint: The startup provides an allergic rhinitis treatment/prevention medical device that improves symptoms of allergic rhinitis by using low-power laser therapy (LLLT) and provides AI based customized prevention information. It is dubbed as a next-generation rhinitis treatment device that can prevent allergic rhinitis.
4. Weddell: The startup simplifies the access to parenting information through a single mobile platform. Currently, Weddell provides professional content and recommended products based on data and AI and plans to provide ease on parenting and every decision they make.
5. Alsemy: The startup is developing AI-based semiconductor device modeling EDA software, allowing fast and accurate modeling of devices by non-expert users. Alsemy’s solution dramatically reduces time from device technology development to chip fabrication, with better prediction of hardware characteristics. The first software is expected to be released in 3Q 2021.
6. Espreso Media: The startup provides deep learning based super-resolution services, which can restore damaged images and create higher resolution contents. Its services can be customized to use in various industries such as surveillance, media, e-learning and medical field.
7. Klleon:The startup has developed Deep-learning based video-generating SaaS for companies. The S/W product can generate voices, images, and videos using scarce sets of data with the few-shot learning technology.
8. Omolle:Omolle’s MATIV is a connected fitness service using the smart mat. Nearly 7,700 pressure sensors in the smart mat monitor the movement of the user. And then MATIV’s AI technology provides various feedback and interaction depending on the workout situation to help users work out enjoyably.
9. TECH: The startup deals with every ceramic electronic parts, especiallly is specializing in LTCC foundry service, manufacturing components for 5g repeater, mm-wave band antenna and module.
10. JONGDAL Lab:The startup makes sourcing of fashion subsidiary materials and fabrics easier. Using AI image search technology, they shorten database registration process and search/recommend items with just a picture. Customers can search more than 900,000 items on the application ‘Buja Market’.

The TIPS Global Pre-accelerator 2021 program is being  held online/offline at TIPS Town in Seoul(TIPS Hall, B1). There will be one workshop/lecture of about three hours duration every week starting from July 22 to August 26. The next session in the program is on August 19, where the startups will learn to make perfect IR decks for pitching to potential investors.

Also Read, 

• Global mentors teach sales strategies to Korean startups at 3rd session of ‘TIPS Global Pre-accelerator 2021’ program  
• ‘TIPS Global Pre-accelerator 2021’ program for Korean startups’ second-week session covers marketing & branding 

• 10 Korean startups selected for ‘TIPS Global Pre-accelerator 2021’; to get lessons for global expansion
• ‘TIPS Global Pre-accelerator 2021’ six-week program for Korean startups begins with lessons in building community