Jay Mok’s family were shocked: 29 years old, recently married, a graduate from a top Seoul university with a good job at a global consulting firm, his career was a source of pride. Then he quit to pour his savings into developing a smartphone application.

Jay Mok的家人震惊了：29岁的他，年纪轻轻，刚刚结婚，毕业于首尔一流大学，在一家跨国咨询公司拥有一份不错的工作，他的职业原本是让他自豪的源泉，但他却毅然辞职，把自己的积蓄倾注于开发一款智能手机应用。

“The older generation don’t understand as much about IT or the mobile business,” he says. “They think if I fail, the whole family will fail.”

“老一代人对于IT或移动业务的了解不像我们这么多，”他表示，“他们认为如果我失败了，全家就完了。”

Scattered across Seoul’s Gangnam Dis­trict, with its towering skyscrapers and trendy shoppers, a cohort of young entrepreneurs is seeking to remedy South Korea’s lack of innovative start-ups. Gathered in borrowed space or rented offices, they are striking out with ventures in software, an area where initial costs are lower than other fields – and where the country’s mighty chaebol conglomerates are less dominant.

分散在首尔江南区（这里到处都是高楼大厦和时髦的购物人群）的一群年轻企业家，正试图弥补韩国缺少创新型初创企业的现状。他们聚集在借来的房子或租用的办公室里，正在创办各类软件公司，在这个领域，初期成本低于其他行业，而且没有被该国实力雄厚的“财阀”企业集团主宰。

While South Korean companies such as Samsung Electronics or Hyundai Motor are often portrayed abroad as plucky upstarts, at home they have loomed large over the economy for decades, just like the other chaebol . Experts fret that the country’s prosperity has sapped the younger generation of the entrepreneurial zeal of men such as Chung Ju-yung, Hyundai’s founder, whose rise from agrarian poverty mirrored his nation’s.

尽管三星电子(Samsung Electronics)或现代汽车(Hyundai Motor)等韩国企业在海外经常被描绘成劲头十足的后起之秀，但在韩国国内，几十年来它们一直在该国经济中扮演着举足轻重的角色，就像其他财阀那样。专家们担心，韩国的繁荣富裕使得较年轻一代的创业热情不像现代创始人郑周永(Chung Ju-yung)等人那样高涨，郑周永从一个贫困农民成长为一位大企业家的故事，堪称韩国发展道路的缩影。

But Gangnam’s software entrepreneurs suggest such worries are misplaced. “Over 95 per cent of our users are outside Korea,” Mr Mok says of Step,, his app on which users track their daily activities. It is being marketed as a private journal rather than a social tool – recording rather than sharing – which he believes is a gap in the market.

但江南区的软件企业家认为，这些担心是不足虑的。Jay Mok在谈到他的应用、让用户记录自己的日常活动的Step时表示：“我们超过95%的用户位于韩国以外”。这款应用被推广为一部私人日志，而非社交工具，是记录而非分享，他认为，这是市场的一个空白。

The app has 10,000 users, and its developers expect to reach 200,000 this year. But Mr Mok and co-founder Daniel Cho had to contend with more than just parental scepticism when they set up their company, WePlanet. Funding is tricky for entrepreneurs in South Korea, where the venture capital industry is tiny and the banks are more comfortable with lending to the chaebol. The two founders used $150,000 in savings ac­cumulated from their consulting days.

这款应用目前拥有1万名用户，其开发者预计，今年用户数量将达到20万。但Jay Mok以及联合创始人丹尼尔•赵(Daniel Cho)在创建WePlanet时，除了父辈的怀疑之外，还得对付其它烦人的事。对韩国创业者而言，融资是个棘手的问题，这里的风险资本行业规模很小，银行更乐于贷款给那些“财阀”。这两位创始人是利用他们以前在咨询行业任职期间的15万美元积蓄创业的。

But they also had outside support. Jimmy Kim, a cheerful 42-year-old entrepreneur, and two friends last year set up Sparklabs to provide new businesses with funding and advice from a global network of advisers. Sparklabs’ founders had made fortunes through technology start-ups: Mr Kim helped build games company Nexon before starting Innotive, which makes management software for big businesses. But they were keenly aware of the barriers facing others.

但他们也得到了外部的支持。42岁的企业家、性格开朗的吉米•金(Jimmy Kim，见上图)与两位朋友去年创建了Sparklabs，为初创企业提供融资以及来自全球顾问网络的建议。Sparklabs的创始人曾经通过高科技初创企业发了财：金曾帮助创建游戏公司Nexon，而后创建了Innotive，后者为大企业制作管理软件。但他们非常清楚其他人面临的障碍。

Bankruptcy laws, for instance, are intimidating, Mr Kim says. “[In the past], if you failed in Korea, you virtually became [seen as] a criminal. There’s a saying in Korea that entrepreneurs are the true patriots because they’re really risking their lives.”

金表示，例如，破产法有些可怕。“（过去），如果你在韩国破产，你几乎就变成了（人们眼中的）一个罪犯。在韩国有句名言，企业家是真正的爱国者，因为他们真的在拿自己的人生冒险。”

Sparklabs has nurtured 16 start-ups, offering each $25,000 in funding and advice from mentors who include executives at foreign companies such as Google, Nike and Deloitte. Their involvement reflects growing foreign interest in the software industry of South Korea, which has exceptionally high smartphone usage and mobile internet speeds. “When I travel in the US, Hong Kong and Singapore, people are very curious about Korean start-ups,” Mr Kim says, citing “the rise of Nexon, Kakao­Talk and [software group] NHN, as well as the synergies with having Samsung and LG as global brands . . . And K-pop has done wonders for business,” he adds, referring to the overseas success of South Korea’s music industry.

Sparklabs孵化了16家初创企业，为每家企业提供2.5万美元资金以及来自导师——包括谷歌(Google)、耐克(Nike)和德勤(Deloitte)等外国企业的高管——的建议。这些外国企业高管的参与，反映出国外对于韩国软件行业的兴趣日益浓厚，韩国智能手机使用量以及移动互联网速度都处于非常高的水平。“当我在美国、香港和新加坡旅行时，人们对于韩国初创企业非常好奇，”金表示，他提到“Nexon、Kakao­Talk以及（软件集团）NHN的崛起，以及三星和LG等全球品牌的协同效应……韩国流行音乐也对企业发挥了奇效，”他补充称，他指的是韩国音乐产业在海外的成功。

Another of Mr Kim’s charges is Knowre, set up by three engineering graduates and a management consultant who were inspired by the hagwon, after-school tuition centres attended by most South Korean schoolchildren. The founders thought a computer program could provide a more entertaining – and more successful – way to help children learn maths.

金负责孵化的另一家初创企业是Knowre，它由3名工程专业的毕业生和一名管理咨询顾问创建，他们的灵感来自多数韩国学龄儿童都会参加的课外补习机构hagwon（学院）。他们认为，电脑程序能够提供一种更好玩、更成功的方法，帮助孩子学数学。

“We wanted it to feel like a video game,” says co-founder Simon Kim, showing a screen on which the user progresses across a wooded landscape. While they worked on the program, they set up their own hagwon in order to study their target market and raise capital. Ultimately they concluded that parents’ attachment to the hagwon system meant their program had little chance of short-term success in South Korea, but they identified stronger prospects in the US.

该公司联合创始人西蒙•金(Simon Kim)表示：“我们希望它感觉像是一个电子游戏。”在他展示的一个屏幕上，用户正穿过一处林木茂密的地形。在他们投入程序开发时，他们设立了自己的hagwon，以研究目标市场和筹集资金。最后，他们得出结论：韩国父母对hagwon体系的依恋意味着，他们的项目短期内几乎没有机会在韩国取得成功，但他们在美国看到了更美好的前景。

Their plan attracted $400,000 from South Korean and US angel investors early last year. A few months later they won an investment of $1.3m from SoftBank, the Japanese telecoms group, and the app was recently named best instructional app in a New York City education department contest. Knowre expects to record its first profit next year.

去年初，他们的计划吸引了来自韩国和美国天使投资者的40万美元投资。几个月后，他们获得了日本电信集团软银(SoftBank)一笔130万美元的投资，他们开发的应用最近在纽约市教育局的竞赛中，被评为最佳授课类应用。预计Knowre明年将首次实现盈利。

Nevertheless, South Korea remains an unforgiving environment for entrepreneurs, warns Lee Kark-bum, head of Future Thinknet, a research institute. Too many backers of start-ups have the mentality of short-term lenders, he says, rather than long-term investors, which means they intimidate entrepreneurs while distracting them from creating sustainable value. Moreover, successive governments have done too little to help start-ups develop international reach, he adds.

然而，研究机构Future Thinknet负责人Lee Kark-bum警告称，对于创业者而言，韩国的环境仍然不利。他表示，在支持初创企业的人士中，有太多人抱着短期贷款者的心态，而不是准备做长期投资者，这意味着，他们会吓坏创业者，分散他们的注意力，妨碍他们创造可持续的价值。另外，他补充称，历届政府在帮助初创企业登上国际舞台方面做得太少。

As a cautionary tale, Mr Lee points to Cyworld, a social networking site that was popular by 2003. But it lost its independence when the owners sold control to SK Group, one of the big chaebols; and although it had 20m or so users in 2006, Cyworld’s failure to expand abroad undermined it at home. “They couldn’t overcome the barrier of English . . . and the domestic market is too small,” Mr Lee says.

作为前车之鉴，Lee Kark-bum提到了在2003年一度流行的社交网站Cyworld。在该公司所有者将控股权售予韩国大财阀之一SK集团(SK Group)后，该公司丧失了独立性；尽管2006年，该公司拥有2000万左右的用户，但Cyworld未能拓展到海外的事实拖累了其在本国的表现。Lee Kark-bum表示：“他们没能逾越英文的障碍……而国内市场太小。”

The rise of smartphones has opened new opportunities, however. Kakao­Talk, an in­stant messaging service laun­ch­ed in early 2010, is now used by a big majority of South Korean smartphone owners and reached 100m users this week. Lee Sir-goo, joint chief executive, says the climate for start-ups is improving, but still has far to go. “There are more venture capital investors around, but the banks don’t lend to start-ups unless you have collateral,” he says. “And for IT services like us, there are regulations that make it difficult to offer services . . . payment by credit card is relatively easy in the US, but here the user has to put in their card details every time they make a transaction.”

不过，智能手机的兴起带来了新的机遇。2010年初创建的即时消息服务Kakao­Talk现在被大部分韩国智能手机用户使用，上周其用户数量达到了1亿。该公司联合首席执行官Lee Sir-goo表示，初创企业的环境正在改善，但还有很长的路要走。“风险资本投资者在增多，但除非你有抵押物，否则银行不会贷款给初创企业，”他表示，“对于像我们这样的IT服务而言，一些监管规定让我们很难提供服务。在美国，信用卡支付相对容易，但在这里，用户每次交易都必须输入完整信用卡资料。”

Prevoius governments’ efforts to help have often been flawed, he adds, with assis­tance for start-ups often loaded with heavy conditions.

他补充称，前几届韩国政府在扶持初创企业方面的措施常常存在缺陷，对初创企业的帮助往往附带严苛的条件。

Nevertheless, some initiatives promised by the new government look promising, says Mr Mok. “Until last year, the government foc­us­ed on creating start-ups rather than helping them to keep growing. It seems the new government has learnt from that.

然而，Jay Mok表示，新一届韩国政府承诺的一些措施的前景看好。“在去年之前，政府关注的是缔造初创企业，而不是帮助它们发展壮大。新一届政府似乎吸取了这一教训。”

“A lot of my friends want to move on to work for start-ups. The younger generation is tot­al­ly different to the older ones. We have less loyalty to the big companies.”

“我的很多朋友都希望跳槽去为初创企业工作。年轻一代与老一代完全不一样。我们对大企业没那么忠诚。”