[Asia Exclusive] 'Plug and Play', From Iranian Revolution Exile to Silicon Valley's 'Midas Touch'

CEO of Side Amid, Established 'Plug and Play' After Seeking Asylum in the US
Raised Funds Through Bottled Water Business for Rental Ventures...First Tenant Was 'Logitech'
Invested Without Rent from PayPal Founder
Transformed Rental Building into Startup Networking Center

In the early days of Google, when they set up an office in the Plug and Play building. (Photo by Plug and Play)

[Asia Economy Reporter Hwang Yoon-joo] ‘PayPal (simple payment, USA), Dropbox (cloud storage service, USA), FiscalNote (bill and legal data analysis, USA), Rappi (delivery application, Colombia), SoundHound (music recognition, USA), N26 (online banking, Germany), Zippo (online shopping logistics, USA)’

All of these are unicorn companies valued at over 1 trillion won. The accelerator that first recognized these companies and made seed investments in their early startup stages is ‘Plug and Play.’ The Plug and Play headquarters is known as the ‘luckiest building’ in Silicon Valley.

The seed investment success rate (growing to a company value of over 100 billion won) is an impressive 10%. Twenty-nine unicorn companies have been born here. This nickname, which admires Plug and Play’s investment insight, also means that startups receiving investment from Plug and Play are recognized as having unicorn potential.

The figure behind this investment legend is Saeed Amidi, CEO of Plug and Play, originally from Iran. Amidi, from an oil business family, lost his entire fortune in the February 1979 Iranian Revolution and fled to Palo Alto, Silicon Valley, USA. At the time of exile, Amidi’s father started selling carpets, and Amidi helped his father while starting a bottled water business.

This was the beginning of his connection to the venture investment industry. The bottled water business was located right next to the office of the Logitech founders. Becoming close to the venture industry founders, Amidi used the money he earned from his business to purchase a two-story building in Palo Alto. Considering the many founders in Silicon Valley, he started leasing office space.

Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal. Photo by Bloomberg

The first tenant was Logitech, with whom he was friendly. After Logitech’s IPO success, the second tenant moved in: Google. Starting with three people, Google expanded to 30 employees before moving out. Then a person named Peter Thiel signed a lease agreement. He is familiar to us as the founder of PayPal. Watching Thiel, Amidi offered, “I won’t charge you rent for one year. Instead, I will invest that money in your business.” Although not an IT expert, Amidi had direct exposure to IT technology trends and profitable startups through his interactions with Silicon Valley founders. This was the moment the venture investment legend began.

Amidi first realized investment returns when PayPal was sold to eBay for about 1.7 trillion won. As global IT companies continued to emerge from Amidi’s building, various founders such as Milo.com and Danger moved into his offices. Amidi began investing in earnest. He leveraged his leasing business for venture investment by renting office space to startup founders at affordable prices, organizing regular meetings with successful mentors, and inviting investors to hold presentations that led to follow-up investments. This is the model of the ‘Plug and Play Tech Center.’ This is why his investment success cannot simply be explained by ‘luck.’

Turning his attention to Europe, Singapore, Japan, and South America to discover innovative companies, Amidi visited Korea in 2019 and established a corporation in Seoul the following year. The domestic startup level exceeded expectations, and he directly experienced the success of Korean-descended founders. FiscalNote, which has clients such as the U.S. Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Tesla, is a representative example. Amidi plans to visit Korea again as early as May to communicate with domestic startup founders and investors.

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