New VC Horizon Invest Selected as Early-Stage GP by Mother Fund Amid Fierce Competition

Chief Fund Manager Daehong Ryu
Focused on Discovering and Value-Adding to Early-Stage Startups with a Super-Gap Strategy

[Asia Economy Reporter Kwangho Lee] Horizon Investment, a newly established venture capital (VC), announced that it was selected as a delegated operator (GP) for the Korea Fund of Funds' June 2022 special early-stage startup sector just six months after its founding. In this sector, 17 other management firms besides Horizon Investment applied, and Horizon Investment succeeded in overcoming a 9:1 competition ratio.

According to industry sources on the 6th, Horizon Investment is in the process of forming a venture investment association with a scale of 20 billion KRW. Currently, 10 billion KRW of Fund of Funds capital has been confirmed, and an additional 10 billion KRW must be secured. Depending on the progress of LP recruitment, the final formation amount may increase further.

The main purpose of the new fund is to invest 60% in early-stage venture companies within three years of establishment or venture companies with annual sales not exceeding 2 billion KRW. Additionally, more than 20% of the total committed amount is set to be invested in companies located outside Seoul and the metropolitan area.

Horizon Investment plans to raise the fund through contributions from institutional investors and general companies with whom it has long maintained good relationships. Although the market situation makes private capital matching difficult, it is expected that the fund can be sufficiently formed within the target schedule, mainly by investors of existing funds that have shown high investment and recovery performance.

Horizon Investment has earned deep trust from investors based on outstanding performance. Although newly established, it is currently managing four funds including project funds, and the current association value has recorded more than double. Its major portfolio includes Megazone Cloud, the number one cloud operation service provider (MSP) in the domestic market; Medical IP, a digital twin-based medical AI solution company; and BeKind, a digital sports content production specialist company.

In particular, CEO Daehong Ryu, who serves as the lead fund manager, has experience meeting various early-stage companies while performing business development and BM advancement consulting roles for early-stage startups at the K-ICT Born2Global Center. Based on this, he has served as a core operator for early-stage startup funds and is a specialized investment analyst for early-stage startups.

Recently, Horizon Investment demonstrated excellent results to investors by successfully selling its investment stake in AI fintech company Craft Technologies to SoftBank headquarters in Japan. It also has the strength of quickly discovering excellent investment targets by extensively utilizing networks with portfolio companies possessing core technologies and small and medium-sized enterprises.

A Horizon Investment official said, "We have diverse experience related to early-stage startups and a rich entrepreneur network, so we are confident in both investor recruitment and successful investment." He added, "Along with successful investments from this fund, we aim to achieve a short-term management scale of 100 billion KRW and will devote all efforts to discovering and value-adding early-stage startups with a super-gap that will lead future markets."

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