Anti-Portfolio

Since 2014, TheVentures has met with a wide range of early-stage startups across Korea. Even after 10 years, we’re still driven by the same ambition: “We’ll be the very first to meet every seed-stage team in Korea!” With that spirit, we continue to review more than 300 startup opportunities every month.

Along the way, we’ve backed successful portfolio companies like GBIKE and HeyDealer—but we’ve also missed out on some incredible founding teams. Some of those opportunities could have generated returns of more than 1,000x. Like many startups, we’ve made bad calls based on flawed assumptions. Each experience has pushed us to think more deeply about how we can meet more founders and become better investors.

As a founder, you’ll hear “no” far more often than “yes.” But those rejections do not determine the fate of your business—not even a rejection from us. One investor’s opinion does not define your team’s abilities, passion, or the true potential of your business. Here are a few companies we passed on that went on to grow fearlessly and change the world.

Viva Republica (Toss)

In early 2014, Seung-gun Lee, the founder of Viva Republica, came to TheVentures seeking his first institutional investment. At the time, not only was it legally difficult for VCs to invest in financial services, but we also felt the challenge was simply too great for a startup to take on. Nearly a decade later, in 2023, Viva Republica was valued at around $7 billion.

Karrot

We first met Kim Jae-hyun, the founder of Karrot, around September 2016 through an introduction in our personal network. I remember him as a fun and compelling founder with an exciting business and market. Still, the valuation he hoped for at the time was higher than the range we typically focused on as a first institutional investor, so we decided not to proceed. By 2023, Karrot’s valuation had reached around $2.3 billion.