'Twice a week from Cheongdo to Seoul': Regional startups bear the burden of investment pilgrimages

"Most of the investment reviewers and investors are in Seoul."

Yang Dong-seop, CEO of Signal Care, made the roughly 600-kilometer round trip between Cheongdo in North Gyeongsang Province and Seoul twice a week last year and in early this year, when the company was deep in fundraising. IR sessions, reviewer meetings and other steps in the investment process required repeated visits to the capital. With about 80 percent of domestic venture investment concentrated in the Greater Seoul area, startup founders from the regions are boarding KTX trains to Seoul every week. Because most investors and reviewers are based in the capital, companies outside it end up spending more time traveling for funding than running their businesses.

"During the period when I was preparing to raise investment, I came up to Seoul almost every week," Yang said in an interview Tuesday. "Even when investors were reviewing us positively, the process kept going — reviewer meetings, CEO interviews, IR sessions — so going back and forth to Seoul was unavoidable."

For startup founders who built their companies outside the capital, a trip to Seoul is no special business trip — it is simply routine. Investors, venture capital firms, accelerators and startup networks are overwhelmingly concentrated in the Greater Seoul area. The Lee Jae Myung government has declared a "national startup era," and the Ministry of SMEs and Startups has worked to identify diverse founders across all 17 cities and provinces through its "Startup for All" initiative — yet the regional gap in South Korea's startup ecosystem shows no sign of narrowing. According to the office of Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Kim Dong-a, the Greater Seoul area — Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon — accounted for 79.6 percent of all venture investment nationwide in the first half of last year, meaning roughly eight out of every 10 venture deals went to the capital region.

Signal Care started out making pet food from edible insects, then pivoted sharply as market conditions shifted. It has since grown into a biotech materials company that uses microorganisms to ferment agricultural and food byproducts into feed and food substitute ingredients. That business model won enough confidence from investors to attract about 9.4 billion won ($6.41 million) in total funding. The company also received investment from Inlight Ventures, which is headquartered in Daegu, but even that deal required countless trips to Seoul during the review process. Yang said, "Inlight Ventures is based in Daegu, but in practice, IR sessions and major decisions were almost always handled in Seoul." He added that nearly all of the investors who ultimately backed the company were Seoul-based firms.

Yang said the single biggest gap in the regional startup ecosystem is human networks. "In Seoul, there are many founders who have already raised investment, and there are plenty of natural opportunities to connect with reviewers," he said. "Hearing directly from founders who have been through the process — learning from their growth — is enormously valuable, but that kind of network is still lacking in the regions."

Shin Jeong-uk, who founded medical device startup JH Biotechnology in Gimhae, South Gyeongsang Province, had a similar experience. After more than 30 years as a professor at Inje University, Shin launched the company to develop a medical device that uses ultrasound to help restore the alveolar bone after implant surgery. He was confident in the technology — but the road was not easy.

"Regional investors also manage funds backed by the Fund of Funds, but they need to keep their own firms alive, so they tend to prefer companies that are already generating sales," Shin said. "Companies with strong technology but no revenue almost always ended with the same response: 'Let's wait and see a little longer.'"

Shin was also selected for TIPS, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups' privately led technology startup support program. "In Seoul, there are many more investors managing much larger pools of capital, so there are relatively more cases of investing based on technology and growth potential," he said. "In the regions, there are fewer investors and limited capacity, which makes it very hard for early-stage companies to get a chance."

Baek Seung-hwan, who runs agricultural startup UniAI in the Chungcheong region, is also making repeated trips to Seoul to raise investment. With a new funding round underway, he visits the capital roughly once a week. Baek cited a lack of information as the hardest part of the fundraising process. "It is not easy to find out which VCs invest in agriculture, or which reviewers cover the sector," he said.

As regional founders voice growing frustration over the lack of investment and networks, the government is moving to put support measures in place. The Ministry of SMEs and Startups plans to establish a 450 billion won regional growth fund this year, targeting five areas: the Daegu-North Gyeongsang region, the southwestern region, North Jeolla Province, Daejeon and Ulsan. The structure calls for a mother fund — co-funded by the Fund of Funds, local governments, universities and regional companies — to invest in region-specific industries, with daughter funds then created from that base to channel capital into local firms.

The Korea Business Angels Association, which carries out Ministry of SMEs and Startups programs including TIPS operations, is also working to energize regional startup ecosystems. On July 15, it held "Scale-Up Summit 2026," an event focused on giving regional startups the opportunity to explore follow-on investment with Greater Seoul-based investors.

However, founders on the ground agree that simply increasing the amount of investment will not solve the problem. The common message from the field is that regions need ecosystems of their own — places where founders can meet investors and share experiences with startup sunbae without having to travel to Seoul.

Regarding those efforts, Kim Bong-deok, director of venture policy at the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, said the ministry held a series of regional venture policy and venture investment briefings in the first half of the year to connect prominent Greater Seoul-based VCs with regional startups. "We plan to hold large-scale regional IR events by area in the second half as well," he said.