N.Thing Series B Investment – “Follow-On Investment”
N.Thing Series B Round Article (Korean)
Korean Agritech Startup Nets $21m As Part Of Series B round (English)
Ascendo Ventures participated in the Series B investment round of N.Thing, a container-based vertical farm company, along with KT&G, Kiwoom Investment, Intervest, SL Investment, and Aegis Asset Management. While the linked article states that we participated in N.Thing as investors for the first time this round, we in fact already participated in as an investor in 2020 via our first fund, the Ascendo Genesis Fund. As such, this investment is a follow-on in our existing portfolio.
We place great importance in considering existing portfolio companies for follow-on investment. The reason is simple in that when we first meet with companies and founders to consider investment by looking at their teams, technologies, and markets, there is no situation in which we invest with an approach entailing “sitting back and waiting for the company to hit the jackpot." The vast majority of startups suffer from growing pains when driving rapid growth and must address their problems aggressively, and thus in many cases, it is imperative that we play various roles as partners to help them grow by investing our resources, too.
For this reason, in an investors’ point of view, a "follow-on" investment is a process that reaffirms our belief in the growth trajectory and the investment hypothesis that we formed when we first invested in the company, and from the perspective of company and founders, it implies that they made a decision to allocate some meaningful part of their investment room to us over other investors because they posit that our participation is more valuable than others.
For this reason, I would like to express my gratitude to N.Thing CEO and founder Hye Yeon (Leo) Kim, Director Joo Won (Chris) Lee, and other key members for giving us the opportunity to participate in the follow-on investment.
Although N.Thing is already making remarkable achievements in the Middle East and in Korea, I genuinely hope the support we give in the Southeast Asian market will contribute significantly to the company’s growth.
Let's go N.Thing!
