Global Startup Festival, Try Everything 2022 Successfully Completed

    LOS ANGELES, CA, December 10, 2022 /24-7PressRelease/ -- 'Try Everything' is a global startup festival held with the members of the start-up ecosystem, such as promising startups, large and medium-sized enterprises, investors, and accelerators from all over the world.

It is held every September and is hosted by the city of Seoul and supervised by the Seoul Business Agency and This year's 'Try Everything 2022' was held on the largest scale ever, with 1,289 promising startups and 366 experts in the global startup ecosystem participating from 21 countries around the world.

The total number of visitors, including offline visitors and online, reached a record of 62,000, which proves its great success.

With the theme of 'Zero to Hero Unleashing the limits', a total of 79 programs including open innovation, contests, lectures, and seminars were held to encourage domestic startups' global expansion and revitalize the Seoul startup ecosystem, with the hope that startups will overcome their limits and become unicorn companies.

About 50 programs were held at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) for three days from September 21 to 23. From July to September, private AC/VC, university industry-academic cooperation groups in Seoul and startup support organizations participated in 29 programs of 'Try Everything Regional Collaborative Programs' in order to revitalize the startup ecosystem throughout Seoul.

In particular, at the opening ceremony on the 21st, Seoul Mayor Se-hoon Oh emphasized the fostering of a privately-led startup ecosystem and said, "In order for Seoul's startup ecosystem to grow further, we need to nurture the power of the private sector to overcome its limits through freedom and creativity." He also announced four key strategies to lead Seoul to become one of the top 5 startup cities in the world. In addition, they held the 'Seoul Open Innovation 1000 Vision Proclamation Ceremony' for Seoul to become an open innovation platform between large and medium-sized enterprises and startups to overcome the COVID-19 crisis and secure future growth engines.

Through the vision proclamation ceremony, about 50 domestic and foreign large and medium-sized enterprises, investment companies, and startup support organizations, such as Mercedes-Benz Korea, Continental Group, SKT, and KYOWON Group, will work together to lay the foundation for the growth of startups and establish a system that can settle innovative technologies in the market.

In the keynote speech, Sebastien Borget, the founder of 'The Sandbox', shared his insights on ways to achieve cooperation, such as information and technology openness between companies, cities, and countries, followed by Tyler Cowen, a professor from George Mason who has a world-renowned authority on the economy, and who gave a keynote speech on the subject of private autonomy and the role of the public.

In one of the major programs, Open Innovation, cooperation cases such as POSCO-PetNow and Mercedes-Benz Korea-Langcode, as well as open innovation cases of MPIC, a 3D display manufacturer that is attracting attention from domestic and foreign conglomerates, were introduced. In addition, Continental Korea, which is leading the global mobility trend, and the Seoul Business Agency signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to discover excellent startups and support shared growth.

At the conference, Phillip Rosedale, the founder of Second Life, Maya Rogers, the CEO of The Tetris, Maria Benjumea, the president of Spain Startup, Jong-yoon Kim, CEO of Yanolja, Jung-sae Joo, CEO of Noom discussed various topics such as metaverse, space exploration, achievement of artificial intelligence (AI), the future of entertainment changed by NFT, digitalization of space, ESG, edutech, and agtech and shared their know-how and experiences with other entrepreneurs.
In the global cooperation session, a French startup delegation and 10 French tech communities in Asia collaborated with French Tech and the French Korean Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FKCCI) to promote startup ecosystem innovation and international cooperation between Korea and France. The business cooperation network was further strengthened by inviting them to the Tech4Good Summit and the Startup Pitch Contest.

At the separately prepared meetup booth, about 50 large and medium-sized enterprises and investment companies had 170 one-on-one meetups with 130 startups, giving them opportunities to seek cooperation such as matching between companies, attracting investment, and technical partnership. In addition, a total of 50 innovative startup exhibition booths and 10 startup support agency promotion booths, including the Seoul Creative Economy Innovation Center, have been installed to create a place for startups to meet investors and networking opportunities with industry officials in a situation where it is difficult for new companies to attract investment due to the global economic downturn and interest rate hikes.

Jong-woo Kim, the director of the startup headquarters of Seoul Business Agency (SBA), said, "Through Try Everything, a win-win cooperation structure between large and medium-sized enterprises and startups will be established, and we will build a growth platform for startups to go beyond Korea and become global unicorns."

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