코로나 사태 청년창업의 영향과 정책방안

Unexpected shocks such as COVID-19 have taken a toll on the global economy and business management. In the case of start-up companies that are heavily affected by the external environment, confusion caused by the pandemic threatens their survival. Nevertheless, due to the government's quick and active response, the number of individual and corporate start-ups in Korea has reached an all-time high since 2012. In particular, young people who are suffering from economic instability and sluggish employment are accelerating their movement to overcome employment difficulties through start-ups, and the number of youth start-ups is remarkable. Over the past decade, the Korean government has made efforts to discover and support start-up companies with high growth potential, but has recently reorganized policy targets and policy measures. It is believed that the expansion of support for youth start-ups has actually led to high-growth start-ups. In addition, it was analyzed that technology-based start-ups have a lower risk of failure than non-technology-based start-ups, which is believed to have increased the survival rate of venture companies with stronger viability than general start-ups by increasing the number of venture companies with technological prowess, and it is believed that the government's policy support is increasing the survival rate of venture companies. However, behind the quantitative increase in youth start-ups, there are continuously voices of concern that there are many zombie companies. Although college students' desire to start a business continues to increase due to the university's start-up curriculum, the proportion of young people who hesitate to start a business due to fear of failure is still the number one in the world in terms of high risk of starting a business and stable employment. In addition, about 68% of companies from the Youth Start-up Academy over five years of government support had no sales at all. In the case of youth start-ups, they face various difficulties because they lack expertise and capital compared to founders in their 40s to 50s. In particular, young entrepreneurs under the age of 30 are more difficult because they have to rely on government-supported projects or angel investors (family or acquaintances) investments rather than support from professional investors from the initial stage of securing capital. In addition, private investment is virtually impossible for young people under the age of 30 to receive investment because it is concentrated on those aged 30-40 with high expertise and potential. With various government policies and education, the system of Concept Development Support (CDS) is well established, but in order to grow into a unicorn company after commercialization, a system that can narrow the gap in the investment stages after commercialization is needed. New knowledge and ideas raised at universities could have started toward the market through infrastructure such as the academic system that encourages start-up education and start-ups, various start-up competitions, and government start-up fund support projects, but if economic society is not ready to accept it, it is not easy to lead to settlement as a company and further corporate growth. Therefore, in this study, the current status of youth start-ups was reviewed, and the support policy for youth start-ups under the age of 30, university education status, and investment status were specifically considered. It was confirmed that the youth support policy has overcome the limitations of the system that supports only quantitative growth since the establishment of the start-up support plan (2021-2023), and support for customized support and re-challenge for each start-up stage has been expanded. However, some young entrepreneurs, who are consumers, are not properly aware of the government's start-up support policy as social support. Therefore, it is important to obtain more information from entrepreneurs through more publicity about the start-up support project and provide support to entrepreneurs, and it is necessary to secure the effectiveness and efficiency of the project by simplifying the application process.