Venture capital firm Company K Partners (307930.KQ) marked its 20th anniversary this year. Launched in 2006 with 7.5 billion won in capital, the firm has grown into a mid-sized VC with more than 1 trillion won under management, backing companies including Netgames, Zigbang, Ridi, Carver Korea and ABL Bio. Assets under management stood at 1.183 trillion won at the end of June. Kim Hak-bum, who has led the firm since its founding, traces that growth to "people." Its investment scope has widened from the internet and gaming to biotech, artificial intelligence, robotics and aerospace, but the principle of finding good founders early and growing alongside them has held for two decades.
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Zigbang, Ridi and Carver Korea Followed
Portfolio Expands Into Biotech, AI and Robotics
Meeting with Seoul Economic Daily on the 30th at his office in Seoul's Gangnam district, Kim said: "Venture investing ultimately comes down to looking at people. Expertise is a given, but what matters most is the sense of responsibility to keep working through a problem to the end instead of giving up when something goes wrong in the business." He added: "The foundation of Company K is investing in early-stage companies and growing with them, which is the orthodoxy of venture investing. Our goal is to find good companies that can raise South Korea's national competitiveness and become their long-term partner."
Kim's ties to the venture world go back more than three decades. After graduating from Korea University with a degree in international trade, he joined Samsung C&T in 1993, working in trading before moving to a technology business unit where he first encountered venture companies. At the time, South Korea had not yet even created the KOSDAQ market. Samsung C&T was then studying the U.S. venture ecosystem while supporting the introduction of foreign technology into South Korea and the commercialization of technology held by domestic research institutes. Kim took part in efforts to bring in U.S. and Japanese technology to localize production of laptop and liquid crystal display (LCD) components, which relied heavily on imports.
Having seen innovative technology turn into a business and contribute to industrial development, he moved to a merchant bank to handle international finance. There he encountered overseas equity and bond funds as well as Silicon Valley venture funds, and watched foreign asset managers raise capital across Asia. If Samsung C&T taught him about "venture," the merchant bank taught him about the "funds" that supply capital to venture companies.
The foreign exchange crisis of the late 1990s changed his course once again. As the merchant banking industry entered large-scale restructuring, he moved to Ilshin Investment in 1999 and began his career in venture capital in earnest. With the internet boom in full swing, he set up a fund with a large domestic telecommunications company to invest in related businesses, gaining experience across the entire process from sourcing companies to assessing business viability and executing investments.
He also lived through the dot-com bust and credit crunch of the early 2000s on the front lines. As investment enthusiasm froze overnight, he watched even promising venture companies fail to secure follow-on funding. Conversely, he saw companies backed during weak markets go on to deliver strong results. It was a period that taught him firsthand that he had to read not only a company's growth potential but also market cycles and capital flows.
What drew him deeper into venture investing was the satisfaction of taking part in the growth of early-stage companies. "Investing in an early-stage company, getting on the same level as the founders and sharing their vision, and then seeing that company succeed brought an enormous sense of accomplishment," Kim said. "I began to think I wanted to take responsibility for this work myself and do it in my own way."
That was why he left Ilshin Investment in 2006 to help found Company K. He did not set grand goals from the outset. He wanted to run a firm where he could build the funds he envisioned and invest in companies whose potential he had identified.
At the time of its founding, Kim held no stake in the firm. It started with outside shareholders providing the capital and Kim taking responsibility for investment and management. As the firm grew, he raised money, borrowing some of it, and bought out existing shareholders' stakes himself. Securing equity around 2014, he came to lead the firm's growth as both manager and shareholder. As of the end of June, his personal stake was 4.42%, and combined with the 23.06% held by WJ Corporation, which he controls, the total came to 27.48%.
Of Company K's 20-year investment history, Kim named Netgames — now Nexon Games — which the firm first backed in 2013, as the investment he remembers most. Company K provided seed funding in 2013 when Park Yong-hyun, who had led development of major titles including "Lineage 2" and "Tera," founded Netgames.
Netgames had set out to build PC-based online games but changed direction as the market shifted. The company then scored a hit with "HIT," which drew on its development team's graphics and game production capabilities. It was eventually acquired by major game publisher Nexon. Through that deal, Company K recovered 78 billion won on a principal investment of 6 billion won, a 13-fold return.
"The large recovery through Netgames completely changed the mood at the firm," Kim said. "It was a result that drew significant attention in the market at the time, and afterward the firm's credibility and competitiveness rose sharply, both in raising new funds and in sourcing portfolio companies."
After the Netgames success, Company K's standing in the VC industry shifted markedly. In 2019, on the strength of returns from Netgames and other holdings, the firm listed on the KOSDAQ. It also expanded its investment scope quickly. It posted strong results with investments in Zigbang, Ridi and Carver Korea, as well as biotech firms ABL Bio and Olix. In AI, Nota and Upstage joined the portfolio, along with Fadu in semiconductors. In aerospace, it backed Lumir and Innospace.
More recently, the firm has concentrated its resources on AI and robotics. Leading examples include AI chip companies HyperAccel and Mobilint, and robotics firms Lion Robotics, Wirobotics and Didim Robotics.
Even as industries change, the starting point for evaluating a company is the founder. Early-stage ventures have neither assets to pledge as collateral nor enough of a track record to gauge business viability. "With a company that has already grown, you can analyze the financial statements, but early-stage ventures have almost none of that material," Kim said. "In the end you have no choice but to look at the person — what the founder has studied, what experience they have had, even how they were rated at their previous employer."
The Earlier the Company, the Closer the Look at the Founder
More Important Than Career or Expertise Is "Will"
The Key Is the Ability to Overcome a Crisis
Aiming to Partner With Firms That Lift Korea's Competitiveness
The quality he watches for most closely is a sense of responsibility. Over 27 years in venture investing since 1999, he said, almost no company has grown without running into trouble. Moments come when the business model wavers, key staff leave or funding dries up. What he looks for, he said, is whether this is someone who will face the problem rather than turn away from it and lead the company through to the end.
Creativity has to come on top of that. In his view, a founder must be able to look ahead at how a market that has not yet formed will look in a few years and set the business direction accordingly. The earlier the company — and the harder it is to judge on current results alone — the more the founder's experience and judgment matter.
The same standard applies when hiring investment professionals. Kim pointed to staff with a sense of responsibility and creativity as the single biggest reason Company K has been able to grow for 20 years. Raising more than 1 trillion won in funds and sourcing companies to back, he said, is the cumulative result of their capabilities.
As an investment that showed his team's creativity, he cited CatchTable. In 2020, when Company K invested, the practice of booking and visiting restaurants through a mobile app had not spread as it has now. Revenue and market size alone made the investment hard to justify at the time, but the team saw the potential for consumer behavior and dining culture to change.
"Rather than assuming a company with no revenue now will never have any, you have to picture how spending habits and booking culture will change," Kim said. "A good investment professional needs the creativity to imagine how a company will develop from here."
Company K is also broadening its business lines to match market changes. It runs secondary funds that buy stakes held by existing investors and has moved into private equity fund (PEF) investing that involves acquiring management control. Its methods have diversified, but the firm plans to continue its role of finding early-stage companies and supporting their growth.
"Over 20 years the investment industry, the founders and the market have all changed a great deal, but what Company K has to do has not," Kim said. "Finding good companies from the earliest stage, investing in them and growing together with them is our identity."
He is… △Born in Seoul, 1967 △Chungam High School △Korea University, international trade △1993 Samsung C&T, new technology business division △1995 Samyang Merchant Banking, international finance division △1999 Ilshin Investment, investment division △2006–present CEO, Company K Partners
