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A startup job hurt marriage prospects
The stigma of startups
The pressure to get into top schools like KAIST and Seoul National, the Harvard and MIT of Seoul, was even greater than in the US. After all that work, graduates were expected to become doctors, lawyers, or government workers, and if they couldn't, to join Samsung. Joining a startup was thought to hurt a person's marriage prospects.
How it changed
Altos struggled to recruit the best of the best, and it lost even when it could match the salaries of Korea's top companies. Over about 20 years, entrepreneurial success stories changed that. Its winning percentage got better and better, and now it wins most of the time. Billionaires have emerged from Korea's tech ecosystem.
Why Altos built in Korea
Altos built its Korea practice with another purpose in mind: the country needed economic drivers beyond the large companies that dominate its economy, especially with its demographic challenges. Its Korea funds are now as big as its US global funds.
Why is Samsung such a prestigious employer in Korea?
Samsung is a chaebol, one of the family-controlled conglomerates that grew under state-backed industrialization in the 1960s and 1970s. Hyundai, LG, and SK are others. These groups offered stable pay, lifetime-style careers, and enormous scale compared with anything else in the economy. Samsung Electronics is one of the largest makers of memory chips and smartphones in the world.
How did Korean startups gain respect?
Naver was founded in 1999 by former Samsung SDS employees and grew into Korea's leading search engine. Kakao launched the KakaoTalk messaging app in 2010, and it became the dominant chat service in the country. Both companies later grew into large public companies. Their founders became among the richest people in Korea.
Why does Korea's demography worry economists?
Statistics Korea reported a total fertility rate of 0.72 in 2023, the lowest of any country tracked by the OECD. A rate of about 2.1 is needed to keep a population stable without immigration. A shrinking workforce would reduce the number of people supporting retirees. The country has among the fastest-aging populations in the developed world.
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