Invest KOREA

Looking for Game Changers

DFJ Athena takes risks and invests in companies with unlimited upside potential

Venture capital DFJ Athena wants entrepreneurs who have the audacity to think they will be the next Facebook.

It wants companies that will surprise them with differentiated technologies to pioneer a new market, companies that believe they can change the world. After all, entrepreneurship requires living and breathing whatever you’re creating, especially in the face of discouragement.

“Might as well work on something that’s gonna be big,” said Perry Ha, co-managing director of DFJ Athena, an affiliate venture fund of the Silicon Valley-based venture capital Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ).

It is with this philosophy that DFJ Athena has invested in about a dozen leading startups in the global technology sector, focusing on Korea-leveraged, Korea-related companies domestically and in the United States. Ha and his co-managing director Henry Chung founded the fund and joined DFJ in 2007, during the early stages of Korea’s venture start-up sector. They recognized the growing importance of the Korean market globally and opportunities in Korean small- and mid-sized companies wanting to expand overseas.

“The Korean government has been talking about globalization,” said Ha. “We think we do some of that at a very specific company level... because we understand Korea, we understand the U.S. and we have a global network [with which] we can connect our Korean companies.”

DFJ Athena, which was preceded by a first fund founded by Ha and with a strong investment track record called Athena Technology Ventures, has offices in Seoul and Silicon Valley and is one of the global DFJ’s 30 funds worldwide. With about $6 billion in capital commitments and having made more than 600 investments, DFJ has backed such industry-changing companies as Hotmail, Baidu and Skype. DFJ Athena’s investment companies include CallGate, a Seoul-based mobile solutions company with technology that enables exchanges between voice and data channels - that could let us see options rather than hearing them when calling call centers, for example - and that could change the way people use mobile phones, said Chung.

Another company is a California-based new materials developer called Precursor Energetics that is making a thin-film coating material for solar cells and has achieved more than 17 percent efficiency.

“Which is a breakthrough in the thin-film industry,” said Chung. “Changing the world is a big theme, but we are doing it one by one, with this kind of small, important improvement.”

DFJ Athena works closely with its investment companies, nurturing every aspect of a venture, whether it’s business development or people issues. They use the global network provided by DFJ’s 30 funds, build global practices and employ a Silicon Valley-style venture capital practice early on. Almost half of DFJ Athena’s deal sourcing comes from Korean venture capital companies seeking help with global expansion.

“Globalizing is not just exporting,” said Chung. “We want to transplant that kind of advanced venture capital practice in Korea and we want to contribute to promote the Korean venture capital industry so we can be a kind of new blood.”

DFJ Athena places as much importance on follow-up investments as it does on initial investments, recognizing that “when companies are going great, they need more money to grow; when companies are in hardship, they also need money,” said Chung. It was with this mentality that they supported companies struggling during the global financial crisis in 2008.

“If we have confidence that this company will overcome hard times... and they have great potential, then we invest,” Chung said.

The managing directors bring the same commitment to their own jobs. Despite challenges and long workdays, they are driven by a love of what they do.

“We are excited about learning new things and building something from nothing,” Ha said.