This article was displayed on the ChosunBiz MoneyMove (MM) site at 2:52 p.m. on Dec. 28, 2025.
In 2013, two entrepreneurs still in their 20s teamed up to launch a used-goods transaction platform. They earned money by working at companies on weekdays and met at a cafe on Sundays to draft their business plan. That's why the company's name was "Sunday Smith" (taken from Coffee Smith).
The platform the two built was called "Sellit." It is the predecessor of "Bunjang," now a thriving used-goods transaction brokerage. Sellit, which started with a 100 million won investment, was sold to Kakao at a 10 billion won valuation, then became the merged entity Bunjang and was sold to private equity fund (PEF) manager Praxis Capital Partners for 150 billion won. Last year it grew into a company worth 500 billion won.
Sellit co-founders Kim Cheol-u and Kim Dae-hyeon now serve as CEO and partner at venture capital (VC) firm The Ventures. As soon as Sellit became a corporation, they received a 100 million won investment from that very VC and started anew as venture capitalists.
On the 17th, we met CEO Kim Cheol-u and partner Kim Dae-hyeon at a location in Gangnam-gu, Seoul. The two said they are carrying on The Ventures' "lineage." Like former CEO Ho Chang-sung, who founded VC The Ventures as a former entrepreneur, they too joined their benefactor The Ventures as former entrepreneurs and are nurturing junior founders.
The Ventures is well known as a VC specializing in early-stage investment. In the case of used-car transaction firm HeyDealer, it invested when the valuation was 600 million won, and the company is now pushing for a listing with a valuation approaching 1 trillion won. It invested in artificial intelligence (AI)-based education platform Riiid at a 1 billion won valuation. At the last funding, the valuation reached 800 billion won.
— Introduce the connection between the two of you.
Kim Cheol-u: "We met as senior and junior in 2005 in the engineering college soccer club at Pusan National University. I majored in environmental engineering, and partner Kim Dae-hyeon majored in mechanical engineering. I wanted to start a business and was writing a business plan alone at a one-room apartment table, but doing it alone was too much. So I called Kim, the most comfortable junior. We researched together and wrote the plan, but at the time Kim was preparing for employment and interviews at large corporations, so he declined at first."
Kim Dae-hyeon: "I told him, 'If you want to start a business together, show your sincerity,' and he even set me up on a blind date. It may sound like a joke, but that's when I felt, 'This person truly wants to try doing a business with me.'"
— What led you to start a used-goods transaction service company?
Kim Cheol-u: "In 2012 I was drawn to a U.S. startup called Used. It provided a service mediating transactions between used-goods sellers and buyers. It raised trust in used-goods transactions while simplifying the cumbersome transaction process through user experience (UX)."
Kim Dae-hyeon: "I happened to have a lot of used-goods transaction experience. In college I was interested in electronics, so I bought used items to try them and resold them, and I also sold friends' items on their behalf. On campus I was somewhat known as 'the kid good at used-goods transactions.'"
Kim Cheol-u: "We launched the application (app) in Aug. 2013 as a sole proprietorship and only established a corporation in February the following year. We set up the corporation thanks to The Ventures. Then-CEO Ho Chang-sung said he wanted to invest, and when I asked 'What should I do?' he told me to establish a corporation. To be honest, at the time I didn't even know you had to set up a corporation to receive external investment."
— Sellit was successfully sold to Kakao not long after it was founded.
Kim Cheol-u: "One year and two months after establishing the corporation and receiving investment from The Ventures, we were sold to K-Venture Group (now Kakao Investment). K-Venture Group became the largest shareholder by holding more than 51% equity in Sellit. When we received investment from The Ventures, the company's valuation was less than 1 billion won, but by the time it was sold to K-Venture, it had achieved remarkable growth (Kim said he could not disclose it, but according to the IB industry, Sellit's valuation at the time was around 10 billion won). I understand Sellit delivered the third-highest investment revenue in The Ventures' history. No. 1 was Edtech company Riiid, No. 2 was Glowdays, which runs the beauty review platform "Glowpick," and No. 3 was Sellit."
— What did you do after selling the company?
Kim Cheol-u: "Even after transferring management control, we still had equity, so we remained affiliated with Sellit and worked there. In Oct. 2017, Sellit merged with Quickket, which was under Naver, to become one company. Thirty from Sellit and 40 from Quickket were combined. The merged entity was named 'Bunjang,' with Kakao as the largest shareholder, and Naver exited by unwinding its equity. After that, I, partner Kim Dae-hyeon, and CEO Jang Won-gwi from Quickket managed the merged entity."
— The largest shareholder of Bunjang now is private equity fund (PEF) manager Praxis Partners.
Kim Cheol-u: "By 2019, I thought we should quit used-goods transactions. We had lost the drive to keep running the business. So instead of Kakao, we went out ourselves to find a buyer. We even approached a listed Japanese used-goods transaction company. That's how we met Praxis (at the time Praxis acquired Bunjang's management control for 150 billion won)."
— Why did you become venture capitalists?
Kim Cheol-u: "On the surface I joked, 'I came to VC because it seemed to have a better work-life balance than running a business,' but the real reason was that I was tired of operating a business yet still enjoyed doing work related to startups. 'Investment' was the way to stay in the startup ecosystem without founding a company. Among many VCs, we thought joining The Ventures, the first to invest in us, would be meaningful."
— What was the first company you invested in after joining The Ventures? Did being former founders make sourcing deals easier?
Kim Cheol-u: "The first company I invested in was a startup called Moaice. It runs 'GolfFix,' a service that diagnoses golf swings through an artificial intelligence (AI) motion analysis solution.
For early-stage investment, if a VC 'goes around trying to find' companies first, it won't work. How could you know who founded what and where? In the end it has to be based on inbound (startups contacting VCs first). In other words, the key for an early-stage specialist VC is to increase inbound more. The Ventures is an investment firm made up of former founders and is trusted to sincerely understand founders' perspectives and struggles. That trust leads to inbound."
— What is the greatest strength of investors who are former founders?
Kim Cheol-u: "Founders have almost no one around them who understands them. Parents say, 'Why didn't you go to a large corporation like Samsung and instead start a business?' and friends work at corporations. In the end, the only people who can understand a founder's mind are co-founders. We can play that co-founder role from outside the company."
Kim Dae-hyeon: "Because we have founded companies ourselves and gone through countless difficulties, we can genuinely empathize with other founders and think through solutions with them. Once we had to pay employees' salaries, but there were only tens of thousands of won in the corporate account. So we took out a loan using the car we drove as collateral and paid salaries. At that time former CEO Ho Chang-sung lent his personal money to the company and said, 'If the CEO gives up, the company fails.' Because he was a former founder, he knew from experience that 'we just need to get over this hump.' We often tell that to portfolio company CEOs."
— What is the essence of founding and early-stage investment?
Kim Cheol-u: "It's not a game of controlling the downside; it's a game where you have to succeed 'big.' So we always tell portfolio company CEOs, 'It's okay to fail. Instead, make meaningful attempts.' Just hanging on without meaning is a waste of time.
In early-stage investment, we describe ourselves as 'like firefighters.' It means we go in the earliest and come out the very last. As a result, there are companies whose valuations after investment (assuming no equity dilution) have grown 700–800 times."