World's Largest Startup Incubator PNP Establishes Daegu Branch ... Delegation Visits Daegu on 13th

‘Plug and Play’ (hereinafter PNP), the world's largest accelerator, has established a Daegu branch and will jointly operate a venture startup program with Daegu City.

An accelerator primarily selects, invests in, and provides professional nurturing for early-stage startups and is also known as a startup incubator.

Daegu City announced on the 13th that the PNP delegation, including Chairman Saeed Amidi, East Asia Representative Philip Vincent (Japan Representative), and Korea Representative Jo Yong-jun, will visit Daegu.

Daegu City Hall Sangyeok Office.

The PNP delegation, scheduled to visit Daegu on the afternoon of the 13th, will begin with a meeting with Hong Jun-pyo, Mayor of Daegu, followed by a visit to Daegu Samsung Creative Campus, an event for the establishment of the Daegu branch within Daegu Scale-up Hub, and participation in the PNP Open Innovation event, along with on-site visits and business discussions related to local venture startups.

Daegu City and PNP signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for fostering global venture startups on January 5th in Las Vegas, USA, during CES 2023. After the event, Daegu City held several business consultations with PNP Korea branch to concretize the agreement, confirming the establishment of the Daegu branch and the joint operation of a venture startup incubation program in the first half of the year.

PNP is a leading accelerator in Silicon Valley, USA, having discovered and invested in over 1,600 startups, including 35 unicorn companies such as PayPal, Dropbox, and LendingClub.

Recently, PNP has been operating more than 60 Open Innovation programs worldwide in collaboration with global corporations like Mercedes-Benz and Facebook. A unicorn company refers to a privately held startup valued at over one billion dollars.

The PNP delegation will first visit the San-gyeok government office to meet Mayor Hong Jun-pyo and discuss future cooperation, then tour Samsung Sanghoe, Cheil Industries Memorial Hall, and Samsung C-Lab startups at Daegu Samsung Creative Campus.

Afterwards, they will visit the Daegu Scale-up Hub (Dash) in Dongdaegu Venture Valley, where the PNP Daegu branch office will be located, to attend the Open Innovation event. At the event, Korea Representative Jo Yong-jun will present the future operation plan for the PNP Daegu branch, followed by a special lecture on venture startups by Chairman Saeed Amidi for local venture entrepreneurs.

PNP plans to jointly discover regional companies with global expansion capabilities based in the Daegu branch and provide mentoring and workshop programs by Silicon Valley experts to the selected companies in collaboration with Daegu City.

The main acceleration targets will expand beyond existing startups to include Daegu City's Pre-Start and Start companies, as well as ABB companies, for company discovery.

Additionally, PNP plans to continuously expand cooperation with Daegu City by assisting local mid-sized companies in establishing overseas investment strategies and enabling them to participate as PNP global cooperation partners through PNP’s global networking. Discussions are underway with two to three local mid-sized companies interested in innovation programs.

Finally, if PNP Korea branch obtains the status to conduct investment activities domestically, it plans to expand cooperation, including the creation of a global expansion fund.

Daegu City plans to announce the ‘Powerful Venture Startup Activation Plan for the 8th Elected Term’ within the first half of the year after the organizational restructuring in May, including recent regional VC meetings and PNP global cooperation plans.

Mayor Hong Jun-pyo said, “We sincerely welcome the establishment of the PNP Daegu branch,” adding, “We will promptly promote cooperative projects to support the emergence of unicorn companies in the region.”

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