Bunjang co-founders use personal startup struggles to mentor emerging businesses
This article was posted on the Chosun Biz Money Move (MM) site on December 28, 2025, at 14:52.
In 2013, two entrepreneurs in their 20s joined forces to launch a secondhand trading platform. They worked at companies during weekdays to earn money and met at cafes on Sundays to plan their business. Hence, the company name was ‘Sunday Smith’s (named after Coffee Smith’s).’
The platform they created was named ‘Sellit.’ Today, it is the predecessor of Bunjang, a well-known secondhand trading intermediary. Sellit, which started with an investment of 100 million Korean won, was sold to Kakao for a corporate value of 1 billion Korean won. It later merged into Bunjang and was sold to private equity fund (PEF) operator Praxis Capital Partners for 15 billion Korean won. Last year, it grew into a company valued at 5 billion Korean won.
The co-founders of Sellit, Kim Chulwoo and Kim Daehyun, currently serve as CEO and partner of venture capital (VC) firm The Ventures. They started anew as venture capitalists at the very VC that invested 100 million Korean won in Sellit immediately after it was incorporated.
On the 17th, we met Kim Chulwoo, the CEO, and Kim Daehyun, the partner, at a location in Gangnam-gu, Seoul. They said they are continuing the ‘generation’ of The Ventures. Like Ho Chang-sung, the former CEO who founded The Ventures as an entrepreneur, they joined The Ventures, a company like a benefactor, as entrepreneurs themselves and are nurturing younger entrepreneurs.
The Ventures is a well-known early-stage investment-focused VC. For example, it invested in Heydealer, a used car trading company, when its valuation was 600 million Korean won. The company is now valued at 1 trillion Korean won and is pushing for a stock listing. It invested in Luid, an AI-based education platform, when its valuation was 1 billion Korean won. At the last funding round, the company’s valuation reached 8 billion Korean won.
— Please introduce your connection.
Kim Chulwoo: “We met as senior and junior members of a university (Pusan National University) engineering college soccer club in 2005. I majored in environmental engineering, and Kim Daehyun, the partner, majored in mechanical engineering. At the time, I wanted to start a business and was writing a business plan alone at a one-room apartment dining table, but it was overwhelming. So I called Kim, the most comfortable junior. We did research and wrote the plan together, but Kim was preparing for employment then and was getting ready for interviews at large corporations, so he initially refused.”
Kim Daehyun: “I told him, ‘If you really want to start a business together, show me your sincerity,’ and he even set me up on a blind date. It might sound like a joke, but I felt then that ‘this person really wants to start a business with me.'”
— What led you to found a secondhand trading service company?
Kim Chulwoo: “In 2012, I was drawn to a U.S. startup called Used. It mediated transactions between sellers and buyers of secondhand goods. It simplified the cumbersome transaction process through a business experience (UX) while enhancing the reliability of secondhand trading.”
Kim Daehyun: “Coincidentally, I had a lot of experience with secondhand trading. In college, I was interested in electronics and often bought and resold used items. I also sold things for my friends. I was somewhat famous on campus as ‘the guy who’s good at secondhand trading.'”
Kim Chulwoo: “We launched the application (app) in August 2013 as a sole proprietorship and established the corporation only in February the following year. Establishing the corporation was thanks to The Ventures. Ho Chang-sung, then the CEO, wanted to invest, and when I asked, ‘What should I do?’ he told me to establish a corporation. Honestly, at that time, I didn’t even know that establishing a corporation was necessary to receive external investment.”
— Sellit was successfully sold to Kakao not long after its founding.
Kim Chulwoo: “One year and two months after receiving investment from The Ventures, we were acquired by K Venture Group (now Kakao Investment). K Venture Group became the largest shareholder with over 51% of Sellit’s shares. When we received investment from The Ventures, the company’s valuation was less than 1 billion Korean won, but by the time we were sold to K Venture, we had achieved remarkable growth (the representative said he couldn’t disclose it, but according to the IB industry, Sellit’s valuation was around 1 billion Korean won at the time). I understand that Sellit was the third-highest investment return in The Ventures’ history. The first was Luid, an edutech company, the second was Glowdays, which operates Glowpick, a beauty review platform, and the third was Sellit.”
— What did you do after selling the company?
Kim Chulwoo: “Even after transferring management rights, I remained affiliated with Sellit as I still held shares. In October 2017, Sellit merged with Quickket, a subsidiary of Naver, forming a single company. Sellit had 30 employees, and Quickket had 40. The merged entity was named ‘Bunjang,’ with Kakao as the largest shareholder, and Naver exited by disposing of its shares. After that, I, Kim Daehyun, and Jang Wongwi, who was from Quickket, managed the merged entity.”
— The current largest shareholder of Bunjang is private equity fund (PEF) operator Praxis Partners.
Kim Chulwoo: “By 2020, I felt it was time to stop secondhand trading because the momentum to continue the business had weakened. So instead of Kakao, we directly looked for buyers. We even approached a publicly listed secondhand trading company in Japan to propose a deal. That’s how we met Praxis (Praxis acquired Bunjang’s management rights for 15 billion Korean won at the time).”
— Why did you become a venture capitalist?
Kim Chulwoo: “Jokingly, I said, ‘I came to VC because work-life balance (work-life balance) is better than business,’ but the real reason was that although I was tired of business, I still enjoyed being involved with startups. ‘Investment’ was the way to stay in the startup ecosystem without founding a company. Among many VCs, I judged that joining The Ventures, the first VC that invested in us, was meaningful.”
— What was the first company you invested in after joining The Ventures? I’m curious if being an entrepreneur yourself made it easier to discover investment targets.
Kim Chulwoo: “The first company I invested in was a startup called Moaiz. It operates ‘Golfix,’ a service that diagnoses golf swings through AI motion analysis solutions.
Early-stage investments don’t work if VCs ‘go looking’ for companies. How can we know where and how someone started a business? Ultimately, it has to be ‘inbound’ (startups contacting VCs first). In other words, the key for early-stage VCs is to increase inbound traffic. The Ventures is an investment firm composed of entrepreneurs, and it is trusted to genuinely understand entrepreneurs’ positions and difficulties. That trust leads to inbound traffic.”
— What is the biggest strength of an entrepreneur-turned-investor?
Kim Chulwoo: “Entrepreneurs have few people who understand them. Parents say, ‘Why didn’t you join a big company like Samsung?’ and friends work at corporations. Ultimately, the only person who can understand an entrepreneur’s heart is their co-founder. We can play that co-founder role outside the company.”
Kim Daehyun: “Because we’ve experienced countless difficulties while founding companies ourselves, we can genuinely empathize with other entrepreneurs and brainstorm solutions. Once, we had to pay employees’ salaries, but there were only tens of thousands of Korean won in the corporate account. So we took out a loan using our car as collateral to pay salaries. At that time, former CEO Ho Chang-sung lent the company his personal money and said, ‘If the CEO gives up, the company will fail.’ Because he was an entrepreneur himself, he knew from experience that ‘if you overcome this crisis, you can make it.’ We often tell our portfolio company CEOs the same thing.”
— What is the essence of entrepreneurship and early-stage investment?
Kim Chulwoo: “It’s not a game of controlling the downside (downside); it’s a game where you have to ‘greatly’ succeed. That’s why we always advise our portfolio company CEOs, ‘It’s okay to fail. But make meaningful attempts.’ Aimlessly enduring is a waste of time.
For early-stage investments, we describe ourselves as ‘firefighters.’ It means entering first and exiting last. Because of this, there are companies where the corporate value (assuming no equity dilution) has grown 700-800 times after investment.”
