Toss, Bucketplace, Fast Five Make Up 10% of Startups Turning Profitable in 2024

Even amidst a challenging investment winter, a wind of meaningful change is blowing through the domestic startup ecosystem. According to the 2024 profit/loss and financial data analysis released by 'Innovation Forest,' even excluding companies that successfully 'graduated' from the market through M&A or IPOs, a remarkable over 10% of startups successfully turned a profit within a year, demonstrating surprising resilience. This is an encouraging result, suggesting that an increasing number of companies are securing profitability beyond mere survival. Particularly, this analysis highlighted numerous companies that garnered attention by recording their first-ever profit since their founding. At the center of this is Viva Republica, the operator of the mobile financial platform 'Toss.' In 2024, its 11th year since founding, it achieved a dramatic turnaround to profit, recording an operating profit of 90.7 billion won. This is evaluated as a case demonstrating strong growth momentum, having moved away from an operating loss of 206.4 billion won in the previous year. Beyond Viva Republica, startups from various fields achieved the remarkable feat of their first profit this year, including Bucketplace (operating the interior platform 'Ohouse'), Fast Five (a leader in the shared office market), Jobis & Villains (of the innovative tax refund service 'Samjjam'), freelance expert matching platform KMONG, and kids fashion platform Childy. These companies proved that they have strengthened their internal foundations and built robust profit models even amidst a harsh market environment. By industry sector, manufacturing/hardware accounted for the highest proportion of all companies that turned a profit, at 12.21%. This was followed by the AI·Deep Tech·Blockchain sector at 10.66%, and the content·art sector also showed significant progress at 7.11%. This indicates that tangible results are being achieved not only through technology-based innovation but also in sectors closely tied to the real economy. An official from 'Innovation Forest' commented, "2024 was a period where survival itself was a competitive edge, beyond mere growth," emphasizing that "startups that secured profitability in such an environment will play an even more leading role in the upcoming market restructuring phase." The official further expressed their ambition to continuously support the startup ecosystem to focus on 'performance-based growth' through in-depth analysis based on actual profit and loss data, rather than merely listing metrics. This will be a significant turning point, demonstrating that the venture investment market is progressing not only in quantitative growth but also in qualitative maturity.