How Korean platform startups survive in the era of platform dominance: A dynamic capabilities theory approach

In the era of platform dominance, Korean startups face dual pressures from global tech giants and domestic incumbents like Naver and Kakao, who enjoy significant market share. These dominant players rapidly imitate or bundle adjacent services and leverage data and distribution advantages, narrowing the window of opportunity for entrants and erecting effective entry barriers. This study investigates how Korean platform startups deploy dynamic capabilities—sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring—to survive and grow amid constrained market conditions, regulatory complexities, and geopolitical asymmetries. Examining a multiple case study of three startups—Simppl, Covering, and Wisely—this paper demonstrates how founders rely on intuition and experiential learning to identify opportunities, execute rapid iterations of service development, and recalibrate their business models to adapt to legal, operational, and competitive pressures. To do so, this study integrates the dynamic capabilities theory with entrepreneurial strategy frameworks such as effectuation, entrepreneurial orientation, and the lean startup approach. The findings reveal that, in early-stage ventures, dynamic capabilities are inseparable from entrepreneurial agency and can be expressed through adaptive experimentation, counter-positioning, and strategic resource recombination. This research contributes to the literature by contextualizing dynamic capabilities within structurally constrained ecosystems and offers practical insights for founders and policymakers in platform-saturated environments.