Graduate School of Business

Thirteen start-up teams moved in May into the expanded space in the Business Building dedicated to nurturing entrepreneurial efforts by students. Constructed over the winter break, the two-part expansion was named the Igloo Lounge — for projects still in their early stages — and the Igloo, for start-ups more advanced in their development.

Alumni of the business school who are themselves entrepreneurs chose the 13 teams based on their business plans and their commitment to fulfilling them.

Do Eun Park (7th semester, Integrated Technology & Management Program), a student who moved into the Igloo, said, "We are developing a ‘Raspberry Pi’-based voicebot, so it is great that we can have space not only for device and equipment storage but also for our team members to work together in a cool and comfortable setting." He added that the teams are also able to share project progress and receive feedback from each other via Kakao group chat. Finally, he thanked the Brave Penguins crew, a student entrepreneur community sponsored by the Yonsei Venture, Innovation & Startup Program (YVIP) and YSB for recognizing and solving inconveniences for all the teams in the new space.

[Lights are on until late night in the Igloo Start-up Incubator Space]

Young Dae Chae (entering class of 2017, Business), a student from a start-up team that moved into the Igloo Lounge, said, "What a start-up team needs most is space. It's extremely helpful for us to have space where we can meet our team members frequently for start-up activities. It's also great to have a whiteboard where we can write down our ideas clearly."

The projects underway in the new space range from enhancing quality of life through digital treatment to improve mental health, to platforms directed at psychological treatment, to robots to  help elderly people, to smart life-friendly services such as fashion styling, clothes mending, services to trade secondhand clothing, and a variety of social services. The last category includes a service in which volunteers help design educational services for nursery schools and finance the effort through sales of clothing.

[A start-up team meets in the Igloo Lounge]

Brave Penguins, founded in July 2019 after benchmarking Aalto Entrepreneurship Society at Aalto University in Finland, is in charge of supporting the operation of the start-up space. The group showed outstanding performance at the SURF 2019 Start-up Competition.