[Opinion] Crisis is Opportunity: Now is the Best Time to Start a Startup

Jae-Seung Park, CEO of VisualCamp and Adjunct Professor at Soongsil University

Many companies are struggling due to COVID-19, and with existing stores closing down, is it really the right time to choose entrepreneurship?

While there may be many reasonable doubts, we can encounter surprising statistics. In fact, startup creation increased during the COVID crisis. As of December 2020, the number of newly established companies was about 1.48 million, an increase of approximately 200,000 compared to the same period the previous year. According to the startup trends announced by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups from January to September 2021, the number of startups was 1,069,000, a 7.3% decrease from the previous year, but it is noteworthy that technology startups significantly increased in sectors such as information and communication (26.1%) and professional scientific and technical services (20.8%) due to the shift to online and non-face-to-face environments.

The fact that more entrepreneurs are blossoming new ideas and putting them into action even in the worst situations reconfirms that the obvious formula "crisis is opportunity" is an undeniable proposition.

In this era of low growth compounded by the COVID crisis, it is true that the startup environment is challenging. However, startup entrepreneurship is different from livelihood-based entrepreneurship. Innovative startups have always discovered opportunities within crises.

The unprecedentedly changed market conditions have become an excellent opportunity for startup founders attempting creative destruction to meet new customer needs. Large corporations or livelihood-based self-employed startups cannot easily abandon their know-how of existing industries, and their organized corporate culture limits new attempts.

As a result, they are inevitably more affected by economic downturns and reduced consumption, but startups based on ideas can move nimbly with their small size and have a relatively superior chance of seizing new opportunities through rapid execution. The core of startup entrepreneurship is to grasp the currents of change and pursue innovative solutions.

In fact, in the startup world, many new business models are emerging in response to lifestyle changes during the COVID era. New services in home cooking, home education, and homework fields to support staying at home, as well as home fun, home health, home cleaning, and home hobby services that help relieve COVID blues and stress. The variety is extensive. Moreover, startups providing new value tailored to customer needs are showing strengths and continuing to grow even in the worst crises.

The COVID crisis will be an opportunity for companies in various fields to fundamentally change their business models. The core is digital transformation and the non-face-to-face trend, and new technologies and services that will break through the untact era will converge in various fields.

Various non-face-to-face healthcare services such as chat consultations enabling remote medical care, and the edutech market incorporating AI, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies based on online platforms will also expand significantly in the future.

Ultimately, if we find ideas that solve consumers' inconveniences according to the new normal and new trends and quickly connect them to entrepreneurship, the pandemic situation will rather be the optimal timing to grow faster than ever and turn crises into opportunities.

Jae-Seung Park, CEO of VisualCamp · Adjunct Professor at Soongsil University

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