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 joined forces to unveil a secondhand transaction platform. They worked at companies on weekdays to earn money and met at a cafe on Sundays to draw up a business plan. So the company's name was "Sunday Smith" (they borrowed the name from Coffee Smith).
The platform they built was called "Sell It." It is the predecessor of "Bungaejangter," which thrives today as a secondhand transaction brokerage. Starting with a 100 million won investment, Sell It was sold to Kakao at a valuation of 10 billion won, then became the merged entity Bungaejangter and was sold to private equity fund (PEF) manager Praxis Capital Partners for 150 billion won. Last year it grew into a 500 billion won company.
Sell It co-founders Kim Cheol-woo and Kim Dae-hyeon now serve as CEO and partner, respectively, at venture capital (VC) firm The Ventures. As soon as Sell It became a corporation, they made a fresh start as venture capitalists at the very VC that invested 100 million won.
On the 17th, we met CEO Kim Cheol-woo and partner Kim Dae-hyeon at a location in Gangnam-gu, Seoul. The two said they are carrying on The Ventures' "generation." Like former CEO Ho Chang-sung, who founded VC The Ventures as a former entrepreneur, they too, as former entrepreneurs, joined The Ventures—whom they consider benefactors—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 its price tag was 600 million won, and the company is now seeking an IPO with a valuation nearing 1 trillion won. It invested in artificial intelligence (AI)-based education platform Riiid at a 1 billion won valuation. At the time of its last funding, the valuation reached 800 billion won.
— Introduce how the two of you met.
Kim Cheol-woo: "In 2005, we met as upperclassman and underclassman in a university (Pusan National University) engineering soccer club. I majored in environmental engineering, and partner Kim Dae-hyeon majored in mechanical engineering. At the time, I wanted to start a business and was writing a business plan alone at my studio apartment dining table, but it was too much to do by myself. So I called partner Kim, the junior I felt most comfortable with. We did research together and wrote the plan, but back then partner Kim was preparing for jobs and large-corporation interviews, so he initially turned me down."
Kim Dae-hyeon: "I said, 'If you want to do business together, show me 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 building a business with me.'"
— What led you to found a secondhand transaction service company?
Kim Cheol-woo: "In 2012, a startup in the United States called Used caught my eye. It provided a service that brokered transactions between sellers and buyers of used goods. It raised trust in secondhand transactions while simplifying the cumbersome transaction process through user experience (UX)."
Kim Dae-hyeon: "As it happened, I had a lot of secondhand transaction experience. In college, I was interested in electronic devices, so I bought used items to try and then resold them, and I sold friends' items for them. On campus I was somewhat known as 'the kid good at secondhand transactions.'"
Kim Cheol-woo: "We launched the application (app) in Aug. 2013 as a sole proprietorship, and only the following Feb. did we establish a corporation. It was thanks to The Ventures that we set up the corporation. Former 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, I did not even know at the time that you had to incorporate to receive outside investment."
— Sell It was successfully sold to Kakao not long after it was founded.
Kim Cheol-woo: "One year and two months after incorporating and receiving investment from The Ventures, we were sold to K-Venture Group (now Kakao Investment). K-Venture Group became the largest shareholder, holding more than 51% of Sell It's equity. When we received investment from The Ventures, the company's valuation was less than 1 billion won, but by the time we sold to K-Venture, it had achieved remarkable growth (CEO Kim said he could not disclose the figure, but according to the IB industry, Sell It's valuation at the time was around 10 billion won). I understand Sell It delivered the third-highest investment return in The Ventures' history. No. 1 was Edtech company Riiid, No. 2 was Glowdayz, which operates the beauty review platform "Glowpick," and No. 3 was Sell It."
— What did you do after selling the company?
Kim Cheol-woo: "Even after handing over management control, we still held equity, so we remained affiliated with and worked at Sell It. In Oct. 2017, Sell It merged with Quicket, which was under Naver, to become one company. Thirty people from Sell It and forty from Quicket combined. The name of the merged entity was 'Bungaejangter,' with Kakao as the largest shareholder and Naver exiting by unwinding its equity. After that, partner Kim Dae-hyeon and I, along with CEO Jang Won-gwi from Quicket, ran the merged entity."
— The largest shareholder of Bungaejangter now is private equity fund (PEF) manager Praxis Partners.
Kim Cheol-woo: "By 2020, I felt we should quit secondhand transactions. We had lost the drive to keep running the business. So instead of Kakao, we ourselves went looking for a buyer. We even approached a listed secondhand transaction company in Japan with a proposal. That's how we met Praxis (at the time, Praxis acquired management control of Bungaejangter for 150 billion won)."
— Why did you become venture capitalists?
Kim Cheol-woo: "Outwardly I joked that I came to VC because it looked better for work-life balance than running a business, but the real reason was that I was tired of operating a company yet still enjoyed working on things related to startups. 'Investment' was a way to remain in the startup ecosystem without founding again. Among many VCs, we judged it meaningful to join The Ventures, the first to invest in us."
— What was the first company you invested in after joining The Ventures? Did being former founders make sourcing deals easier?
Kim Cheol-woo: "The first company I invested in was a startup called Moeyes. It operates 'Golf Fix,' a service that diagnoses golf swings through an artificial intelligence (AI) motion analysis solution.
For early-stage investments, if a VC 'goes out looking' for companies first, it leads nowhere. 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. The Ventures is an investment firm made up of former founders and is trusted to genuinely understand founders' perspectives and hardships. That trust leads to inbound."
— What is the greatest strength of an investor with a founder background?
Kim Cheol-woo: "Founders have few people around them who understand them. Parents ask, 'Why didn't you go to a large corporation like Samsung and instead start a business?' and friends work at corporations. Ultimately, the only people who can understand a founder's heart are co-founders. We can play that co-founder role from outside the company."
Kim Dae-hyeon: "Because we founded a company ourselves and went through countless difficulties, we can truly empathize with other founders and think through solutions together. There was a time when we had to pay salaries but had 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 boss gives up, the company goes under.' Because he was a former founder, he knew from experience that 'you just have to get over this hump.' We often share that with our portfolio company CEOs."
— What is the essence of founding and early-stage investment?
Kim Cheol-woo: "It is not a game of controlling the downside; it is a game where you have to succeed 'big.' So we always tell portfolio CEOs, 'It is okay to fail. Instead, make meaningful attempts.' Hanging on without meaning is a waste of time.
In early-stage investing, we describe ourselves as 'like firefighters.' It means we go in earliest and come out last. As a result, there are companies whose valuations after investment (on the premise of no equity dilution) have grown 700 to 800 times."