Starbucks Continues Supporting Youth Entrepreneurship Through Online Startup Cafe

Startup cafe lectures shifted to online format in accordance with social distancing measures

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Seon-ae] Starbucks Coffee Korea announced that it will change the ‘2020 Starbucks Startup Cafe,’ a program that systematically supports youth entrepreneurship, to a non-face-to-face online format starting from the 23rd, continuing to support youth startup culture even amid social distancing.

The Startup Cafe is Starbucks’ youth entrepreneurship culture support program that provides various networking opportunities such as lectures and seminars to help young people preparing for startups. Since 2015, Starbucks has been operating this program in cooperation with the Seoul Center for Creative Economy and Innovation to ensure smooth operation of startup education and event lectures for youth, networking with startup experts, one-on-one startup mentoring, and startup camp programs.

This year, starting with a lecture by Lee Moon-joo, CEO of the youth startup ‘Cookat,’ held at the Starbucks Seongsu Station store in June, a total of 10 Startup Cafe activities were conducted at Startup Cafe base stores nationwide until mid-August before the social distancing level was raised to level 2, meeting a total of 193 young people aspiring to start a business.

In particular, in May of this year, Starbucks opened its second Community Store and signed a ‘Caring Company’ agreement with the Ministry of SMEs and Startups to support youth entrepreneurship culture. It is also collaborating with Prism, the nation’s largest youth startup network, and the Korea Accelerator Association, a startup planning organization specializing in startup investment, to support the youth startup ecosystem more systematically and diversely.

To stabilize the COVID-19 situation and prevent its spread, Starbucks will replace offline lectures starting from the 23rd with online sessions. Accordingly, excluding holidays, a total of 15 lectures will be uploaded every Wednesday and every other Friday on the Starbucks Startup Cafe blog and the Seoul Center for Creative Economy and Innovation’s official YouTube channel under the Starbucks Startup Cafe playlist.

Through this, prospective young entrepreneurs can watch lectures anytime and anywhere online without the constraints of time and place, rather than in offline spaces. The first and second lectures will be conducted by selecting the most well-received lecture topics from last year, and thereafter, lecture topics will be chosen based on votes by prospective young entrepreneurs via the Starbucks Startup Cafe blog or customized topics selected by Creative Economy Innovation Centers nationwide.

After all online lectures are completed, an online presentation contest for outstanding startup ideas will be held, where participants present their startup ideas. Eligibility requires attending the Startup Cafe at least twice either online or offline. Participants who submit their startup plans in the required format will be screened, and those selected will be given the opportunity to present. Among the presenters, the top 10 outstanding presenters will be offered the chance to participate in a startup benchmarking program.

Han Jeong-su, Director of the Seoul Center for Creative Economy and Innovation, said, “The Startup Cafe program has provided many young people with opportunities to exchange ideas about startups. Due to the COVID-19 situation this year, it is difficult for many people to gather in one place, so we have prepared opportunities to continue experiencing Startup Cafe content online.” He added, “Going forward, the Seoul Center for Creative Economy and Innovation will continue to support idea discovery and the spread of startup culture in various ways suitable to the situation in cooperation with Starbucks.”

CEO Song Ho-seop stated, “This online Startup Cafe is part of efforts to maintain continuous exchange and spread startup culture for youth entrepreneurship amid social distancing.” He added, “We will continue to support and encourage prospective young entrepreneurs who wish to start a business by providing high-quality programs without time and place constraints, so that more young people can courageously realize their dreams through online content.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.