‘카이스트 vs. 서울대 스타트업 슈퍼 매치’ 성료 > NEWS

 

[DataNet] Global accelerator SparkLabs announced the successful conclusion of the “KAIST vs. Seoul National University Startup Super Match,” co-hosted with the social enterprise Haengboknarae, KAIST Impact MBA, and the SNU Center for Startup Support.

The Startup Super Match served as a stage to introduce startups striving to solve pressing social challenges through innovation to both investors and the public. The event was held as a special program of the nation’s largest social value festival, the 2025 Korea Social Value Festa.

Adopting a head-to-head competition format, the event featured four startups nurtured by SparkLabs under the KAIST Impact MBA program and four startups from Seoul National University’s acceleration program, SNU BIG Scale-up. Each team took the stage to deliver IR pitches in front of the audience.

Across four rounds of pitching, each startup presented its vision focusing on the social problems they aimed to solve, the uniqueness and scalability of their solutions, and their potential social impact. Panel judges—Kyunghee Choi, CEO of Sopoong Connect, and Taejoon Roh, Acting Partner at Primer—provided in-depth feedback and advice.

Following the evaluations by judges and the audience, AP Green, which is developing an on-site clean hydrogen production system for customized power supply, was awarded the Grand Prize. The Excellence Award went to Perioneer, a developer of groundbreaking periodontal disease treatments. The Best Pitch Award, determined by audience votes, was given to Domino Effect, an education platform tailored for foreign caregivers. Based on the aggregated results of individual performances, Seoul National University was named the overall winning university team.

In addition, the latter half of the event featured a special guest session with Booon, the winner of Japan’s Impact Shift social venture competition, who introduced its innovative model of recycling food waste into insect protein to the Korean audience.

Judge Taejoon Roh, Acting Partner at Primer, remarked:

“The startups on this stage are not only tackling social issues but also presenting highly competitive business models. Unlike the past, when social ventures were mostly focused on social value, I could clearly witness their evolution into enterprises encompassing economic value and global scalability.”

Source: https://www.datanet.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=204813