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"What matters more than the glamorous present of unicorns is the growth pattern during the first 1 to 7 years after founding. By reverse-engineering the success trajectories that Toss and Coupang followed in their early stages, we can precisely identify, through data, which of the numerous budding startups will become the next unicorn."
Park Jae-jun, CEO of Antok, recently defined the essence of his company's self-developed AI-based success path prediction algorithm, 'Victory Road,' in these terms during an interview with MoneyToday's startup media platform, 'Unicorn Factory.'
A representative example of implementing this Victory Road model specifically for real-world financial applications is 'NH Radar.' Antok recently developed a prototype of 'NH Radar,' a domestic fintech ecosystem analysis platform, in partnership with the AI Transformation (AX) Strategy Division of NH NongHyup Bank through the bank's innovative startup incubation program, 'NH Open Business Hub.' This project, which began last May, is currently in its final stages of development ahead of an official demonstration scheduled for November.
NH Radar is a platform that aggregates computer data from over 3,000 domestic fintech startups in real time to predict growth potential. Antok did not limit fintech to specific technologies but broadened the scope to include all startups that have gone through incubation programs by financial institutions or public institutional investors. The company conducted a comprehensive survey of the top 20 support programs in Korea, including 10 commercial banks, five non-bank financial institutions (such as Kyobo and Samsung Financial), and five public institutional investors, and visualized them as a network map. Traditional financial fintechs are placed within the central circle, while non-financial convergence fintechs are positioned outside the circle, allowing for an at-a-glance understanding of the ecosystem's landscape.
In particular, the platform features a comparison function that verifies the actual performance of each incubation program through data. It precisely analyzes not only the survival rates of incubated companies by institutional investor and the success rates of initial public offerings (IPOs) and mergers and acquisitions (M&A), but also investment fundraising results and contributions to 'regional balanced investment' aimed at cultivating promising startups outside the metropolitan area.
The most core weapon is 'customized technology auto-matching' with NH affiliates and internal departments. When specific fintech technology keywords required for field operations are entered by department, the Victory Road engine selects startups with the highest technological fit and growth potential from among approximately 3,000 companies and connects them in real time.
Park (CEO) stated, "The criteria for defining 'success' vary completely between institutional investors or departments," explaining that "the lending department views success as stable companies with low risk and gradual revenue generation, while the open innovation department evaluates startups capable of technological collaboration that synergizes with its own business as the most successful."
He further emphasized, "Victory Road is designed to precisely learn the collaborative success criteria pursued by NH NongHyup Bank, enabling internal practitioners to immediately find optimal partners without having to search for technology startups on their own."
The principle of Victory Road lies in reverse-engineering 'success DNA.' It analyzes activity logs across more than 300 items—including patents, concentrated R&D investment amounts, development of ultra-advanced technologies, wage growth rates, and hiring trends over the first 10 years of already validated leading companies—to derive a common growth equation. Based on this, it cross-references in real time with a list of 30,000 startups selected from a sample of 2 million domestic companies to identify top-potential high-growth firms. It also features an 'one-on-one recommendation' function that calculates the suitability of government support programs or financial products a company should utilize to scale up, based on diagnostic results.
Antok's Victory Road has been embedded as the core engine of IBK Industrial Bank of Korea's next-generation system, the 'Future Growth Model,' and linked with 'TIPS MRI,' a diagnostic tool for TIPS companies by the Korea Angel Investment Association and the Startup Support Agency, thereby proving the algorithm's validity in both public and financial sectors.
Based on this technical trust, Antok is moving to transform its business structure by the end of the year. Moving beyond the existing on-premises method of directly embedding and installing models into large institutional investors' systems, it will officially launch a standardized cloud-based SaaS (Software as a Service) within the year.
With the introduction of the SaaS model, service supply unit prices are expected to drop dramatically. In addition to major commercial banks, card companies, securities firms, and asset management firms, venture capital (VC) firms, accelerators (AC), and local governments, which previously faced heavy budget burdens, will be able to easily subscribe to high-performance AI diagnostic and scouting engines.
Global market expansion is also gaining momentum. Antok has been securing data on local Asian companies through its Singapore subsidiary established last November. The company will participate for the first time in the 'Singapore Fintech Festival (SFF),' the world's largest fintech event, to be held in Singapore on the 18-19, not as part of a joint booth but with a standalone Antok booth. Through this, it plans to unveil the Victory Road International prototype, targeted at global markets, to investors and financial institutional investors worldwide.
Park (CEO) added, "The traditional SI method of directly building systems for customers imposes significant cost burdens on clients and is labor-intensive for our company," stating that "we now have a business model that allows for mutual win-win outcomes through a standardized cloud-based SaaS model, and we will fully accelerate overseas market expansion starting with the Singapore Fintech Festival in November."
[MoneyToday startup media platform Unicorn Factory]
in FUTURE
