Its key product, Dongnae FLEX, offers short-term, fully-furnished rentals with low deposits, appealing to fresh graduates or travelers unable to cough up the hefty deposits typically required of Korea’s apartments.

Former WeWork executives Insong Kim and Korean-American Matthew Shampine founded Dongnae in 2020. They are “Making it a better experience for the brokers, for the landlords, and especially for the tenants,”  Shampine said in an interview.

Dongnae has welcomed local and global investors. Its $21m series A funding round in March included Lyft and Doordash backer NFX, Airbnb backer MetaProp, and Korea’s oldest investment fund Daol Investment and Hana Financial.

More than 80% of Korean household wealth is in real estate, but it’s increasingly harder to become a homeowner. In Seoul, South Korea’s capital and most populated city, the average apartment price doubled between 2017 and 2021.

The startup company began as a listing platform for renters to book agency visits, but it was unsuccessful. Shampine believes the business model’s early failure generated “good and healthy” but painful reflections. According to Forbes, conversations with customers, brokers, and team members on the ground informed Dongnae’s goal of “becoming the supply, instead of hunting for the supply.” 

The firm switched to serviced apartments in July 2021. At the end of its current investment, the business had 60 apartment buildings; now it has 80 across 12 Seoul districts.

Dongnae wants to offer more home services to its residents in the future, taking advantage of Korea’s booming market for furniture and other lifestyle goods.

Who wouldn’t want to engage in something that generates value? It took a while before you could achieve something like this. You had to be determined and keep going to get through the process. 

Think about how CEO Sun Yong Kim-Manzolini runs Lush Enterprises as an entrepreneur and, at the same, an investor. After working in the medical field for 33 years, she transitioned into entrepreneurship and trading options. She used her same can-do spirit and created opportunities.

All of her struggles, Kim-Manzolini told the USA Today, have helped to mold her into the woman she is today. She grew up as an orphan in Korea and was adopted by an American couple at 14. As an adult, she got into an unhealthy relationship but eventually got the courage to leave and move forward.

Kim-Manzolini knows that changing careers requires a great deal of hard work and self-control on her part. For years, she dedicated many hours per day to studying the ins and outs of the options trading industry and eventually mastered it. She simply had faith that she could pull it off, so she gave it her all without holding back.

Trading options expose investors to a diverse range of potentially significant risks. Even a single misfortune can completely wipe out a trader’s profits on the foreign exchange market due to the high risk associated with trading. But Kim-Manzolini did not let the challenges she faced discourage her, as she started gaining a new perspective on the situation. Instead of questioning why her experience was challenging, she adopted the mantra “Why not me?”

And as a result, she made $178,000 in her first year of live trading. Kim-Manzolini is now the owner of a multi-million dollar business. Her understanding of how to trade successfully was aided by the incredible commitment and sacrifice she made. 

The fact that Kim-Manzolini didn’t give up when it would have been simpler to do so is something for which she is grateful. She decided to focus on the positive aspects of the situation rather than ruminating on the potential downsides. She also put in a lot of time and energy and came up with a unique approach.

Recognized as one of the world’s top 100 venture capitalists by Forbes for 11 years in a row, Singaporean venture capitalist Jenny Lee stayed in her hometown to raise money for four new funds launched by her firm GGV Capital at the height of the pandemic in 2020. 

For four months, according to Forbes, the veteran VC barely slept as she made 250 zoom calls and remotely raised $2.5 billion from investors around the world. Lee and her team raised the most capital in GGV’s 22-year history, boosting assets by 27% to $9.2 billion. 

Long before she became one of Asia’s most powerful businesswomen, she earned a bachelor’s and master’s in Electrical Engineering at Cornell in 1995. She became an aviation engineer at Singapore’s ST Aerospace, where she modified F-16 fighter planes.

In 2001, the company sent Lee to attend Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management where she earned an M.B.A., but she had wanted to be a venture capitalist for a long time, so she quit her job that same year to follow her hidden passion.

Lee paid ST Aerospace $300,000 for not finishing the 11-year scholarship bond that paid for her bachelor’s, master’s, and M.B.A., but she has no regrets. For her, it was the best move.

She got her start as a venture capitalist at Morgan Stanley and Jafco Asia, but she made her name in China after joining GGV to create its office there in 2005. One of Lee’s more successful discoveries was the mobile phone maker Xiaomi before it had sold its first handphone.

Today, Lee is one of GGV’s top-tier managing partners along with Singaporean Jixun Foo, an early Grab investor. Hans Tung, who’s been on the Midas List 11 times. And VCs who have U.S. investment, industrial, and entrepreneurial expertise.

GGV’s 354 firms are balanced between Asia-Pacific and the Americas (GGV claims its investments include more than 85 unicorns). With the U.S. having more investments, at roughly 130, and 77 in China.

The company’s assets under management have expanded more than 50 times since its founding in 2000.