The Chinese model?
We recently held an entrepreneurship ideation workshop with some DPR Koreans in Shanghai. This new micro-format we are testing is meant to pilot creative legal approaches towards solving the key issues we have identified over the years that prevent the creation of an innovative startup ecosystem. On this session, we went over the need for a cheap and accessible legal construct that would allow startups to be created in DPRK.
Our position on this legal construct is that
1. It should be aligned with existing contractual precedents within the DPRK that allow people to operate a commercial enterprise
2. It should mimic the process by which innovative startups grow elsewhere – the need for incremental rounds as a risk management measure
3. It must be cheaper and more accessible to Koreans than existing laws for enterprises, which have a high cost burden, have high regulatory hurdles and are biased towards projects with high capital requirements
4. It should allow entrepreneurs to directly participate in the upside of business success, to align incentives between the enterprise and the management
The discussions went well and provides us a direction as we consider how to add legal infrastructure to the first ever incubation program in the country that one of our past programs help created.
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