Google selects Seoul as its third campus for startups

“Most successful products start from unique ideas that many people believed hard to succeed. Google’s ‘Campus Seoul’ will provide strong support to such ideas."

Sundar Pichai, a senior vice president of Google, who visited Seoul unexpectedly, said to reporters on Wednesday. Since joining Google in 2004, Pichai is a key member responsible for the Android mobile OS, Chrome, and Gmail. When Microsoft was searching for a new CEO early this year, he was mentioned with Satya Nadella who is now Microsoft’s CEO.

He has visited Korea to introduce Google’s “Campus Seoul,” a program that supports start-ups. Google held a press conference with Pichai and John Lee, Google Korea’s CEO at Autoway Tower in the Gangnam district of Seoul and said “Campus Seoul” will be the first in Asia and the third in the world following London and Tel Aviv.

Campus is a place for entrepreneurs to support and to incubate start-ups. A package of support for start-ups such as mentoring programs on a wide range of topics for tech start-ups such as online marketing and related laws and meetings with investors takes place in the Campus. Google’s various platforms and devices will be available. It is a place only for start-ups as represented by the case where an employee serving coffees and an entrepreneur wannabe talked in the place and finally teamed up to start a business. It also offers a program “Campus for Mums” to encourage start-ups among women with children.

Google has selected Seoul as its third Campus after comparing the ability of startup companies, entrepreneurship, and the start-up environment among hundreds of cities. Pichai said, “We analyzed many cities after our success in London. Korea is familiar with changes, 80 percent of its population uses smartphones, and it produced many creative achievements using the Android platform.” Google’s selection of Seoul was partly attributable to President Park Geun-hye’s meeting with Larry Page, the co-founder and CEO of Google who visited Seoul in April this year, where the president expressed her willingness to cooperate for the creative economy.

Campus London, Google’s first Campus, opened in March 2012. It is in the center of the “Techcity Project,” which transformed Shoreditch, formerly notorious as a slum, into Europe’s largest IT cluster. Campus London using the entire seven-story building is used by some 30,000 entrepreneurs from the world.