Few People Know What a Venture Studio Is, So We Told the Story Through Interviews

When taking on PR for a new brand, communicating brand news matters, but it matters even more to set a clear direction for what to emphasize and to present the brand’s achievements, vision, and goals in a way that is both strategic and effective. What we do, why we exist, real-world cases, and our vision are difficult to convey through press releases or planned coverage alone, given the constraints of timeliness and the complexity of the content. One PR approach well suited to this challenge is the interview, which lets us convey a wide range of content in a concentrated way through a more detailed and vivid story.

What was the first message Mint Venture Partners needed to deliver?

Mint Venture Partners is a “venture studio” that discovers bio and healthcare technologies and stays involved from company formation through operations, investment, and exit. Here, we put the emphasis on the concept of the “venture studio” itself, which would be unfamiliar to most people, including those in the industry. Specifically, our goals were to:

• Raise awareness of the venture studio concept
• Clearly communicate our identity as an organization that builds startups directly, distinguishing us from typical VCs and investment firms
• Establish the necessity of venture studios by explaining why building startups directly is needed, along with examples of successes created this way
• Ultimately, carry the discussion through to the point that “Mint Venture Partners is a leading venture studio in Korea”

With this PR direction set, our aim was to uncover a variety of related stories.

It is difficult to fit all of this into a press release alone. Long, context-heavy stories, such as why the venture studio model is needed or what led to the decision to found one, call for separate content.

Why are interviews effective for raising awareness of a new brand?

Interviews can convey, in concrete terms, a founder’s experiences and thinking that are hard to cover in a press release. For a brand that is not yet well known, rather than repeating the organization’s name, it is more effective to connect the brand to a person and a story that readers can remember.

For Mint Venture Partners, Chairman Jae-Hoon Song’s career was an important content asset. Having spent more than 30 years in the medical field, including serving as Director of Samsung Medical Center, why did he move into the entirely different worlds of venture creation and investment? What problems did he see on the ground, and how did he work to solve them? By telling this story through interviews, we could explain the necessity of the venture studio more effectively, grounded in the company’s founding background.

How can interviews and press releases be used together?

If a press release conveys what happened, that is, the facts, an interview explains why we do this, that is, the story. Placing the two together allows facts and story to fill each other’s gaps, enabling more multidimensional PR.

In our interviews with Hankyung (The Korea Economic Daily) and Dong-A Ilbo, we vividly covered, respectively, the background behind the decision to found the company, the commercialization of professionals’ technologies, and the need for venture studios. These are topics that can be handled far more flexibly in an interview than in a press release, which must account for timeliness and objectivity. At the same time, we distributed press releases on our KOSDAQ IPO results and our participation in MEeT 2026, a lecture event on commercializing biotech, highlighting our current efforts toward corporate investment and research on technology commercialization, for the development of both the company and the industry.

Active press release distribution can also lead to interviews, and the reverse is true as well. The recent Dong-A Ilbo interview is one example: the reporter saw our press release about the MEeT 2026 lecture, sympathized with CEO Song’s awareness of the issues, and the interview came together as a result.

What should you look at when planning interviews in tech PR?

An interview should not be a long-form company introduction; it should start from the questions that industry insiders and readers are genuinely curious about. For a new brand in particular, it is important to have a structure in which the CEO’s personal experiences and the company’s business model connect naturally.

With this in mind, our interviews at Mint Venture Partners did not stop at listing the company’s or the CEO’s accomplishments. We tied them closely to current problems in the industry and the efforts being made to solve them, aiming to extend the story all the way to the ultimate question: “Why are venture studios needed?” As a result, we were able to run multidimensional PR that showed the company’s key news together with the CEO’s vivid story.

FAQ

Q. Can interviews be pursued with people other than the CEO?

A. Yes. C-level executives and working-level staff can also be interviewed if their story fits the reporter’s angle. In particular, if the focus is on a specific technology or field that calls for more specialized content, they may be able to deliver deeper, more accurate information and narrative than the CEO.

Q. What should you be careful about during an interview?

A. Those unfamiliar with media PR may unintentionally act rudely, not knowing the conventions and etiquette of the press industry, for example by changing the interview schedule without notice or asking to see a draft of the interview. As a media PR professional, you need to brief the interviewee in advance on what to keep in mind when dealing with reporters, so that you can mediate smoothly between the reporter and the interviewee (the company).

Q. How should you handle aggressive or difficult questions during an interview?

A. Candor matters in an interview, but if it goes too far and conflicts with the company’s stance, or turns into excessive criticism of the industry or government policy, it becomes a problem. Before the interview, make the interviewee aware that aggressive or critical questions about the industry may come up, and guide them to answer smoothly. For example, when asked about excessive government regulation, rather than focusing on the regulation itself, they can place greater emphasis on the brand’s response and efforts in that situation. It also helps to share the expected questions in advance (99% of reporters share their main questions before an interview) and, if possible, to rehearse with the interviewee.

Conclusion

Working on PR for Mint Venture Partners, I came to realize that an interview is not merely a way to give the CEO exposure. Through interviews, we turned the founding background and the necessity of venture studios, which are hard to convey through press releases, into concrete stories, and explained the brand’s work and reason for existing in greater detail and with more impact. Because an interview lets you convey a great deal of what you want to say about a brand in a concentrated, story-driven form, it is a strategy well suited to the early stages of brand PR.