Startup Networking, Let's Stop with Bingo Games
Shinhan S²BRIDGE Daegu's Choice: RealWorld Word Challenge
Think back to startup meetup days, demo days, and IR days at the venues. Before events begin, there is inevitably awkward silence between CEOs meeting for the first time. To break this atmosphere, the MC runs bingo games or light recreational activities, but the CEOs only laugh awkwardly and don't really participate. For busy entrepreneurs, games that feel cringe-worthy seem like a waste of time.
That's why more and more startup event organizers, accelerators, and startup support organizations are looking for different approaches. That's the technology-based participatory workshop, RealWorld Word Challenge.
On June 17, 2026, a Daegu regional startup event held at Shinhan S²BRIDGE Daegu clearly demonstrated this potential.
Shinhan S²BRIDGE Daegu Word Challenge, What Happened?
On that day, 64 startup members gathered at Shinhan S²BRIDGE Daegu were divided into 9 teams and participated in the RealWorld Word Challenge. The theme was one: "Our Challenge for a Changing World." Since a single startup cannot create innovation that changes the world, we held RealWorld's interactive workshop at a venue that fosters inter-company solidarity while participating in various accelerating programs.
The Word Challenge is not an education where you sit and listen to a lecturer's lecture. It's a mission-based team building program where you directly find English words hidden in QR codes scattered throughout the venue and work with your team members to complete the most impressive sentence. The process flows through four stages.
Exploration — Discover hidden QR codes in every corner of the venue and collect English words in your inventory.
Combination — Lay out the words your team members collected together and design a sentence structure that fits the theme.
Completion — Create an English sentence that best fits the theme "Our Challenge for a Changing World."
Sharing — Present team results and share insights on challenge and collaboration by liking each other's work.
Even among people meeting for the first time, conversation naturally begins in the process of running around to find words, gathering opinions, and refining sentences. It's not a game forcefully created to break awkwardness, but the very structure that requires collaboration to solve a shared mission creates networking.
Results by the Numbers — Satisfaction 5.0, Completion Rate 100%
After the Word Challenge ended, the on-site data was clear.
All 9 teams completed their missions. (Completion Rate 100%)
9 completed sentences were created.
All participating teams gave each other 5-star ratings. (Average satisfaction 5.0 / 5.0)
Teams gave each other a cumulative 40 likes, and 20+ team activity photos were voluntarily shared.
The sentence that received the most empathy was Team 7's "Try to collaborate and change world." (Let's challenge together and cooperate to change the world), which garnered 9 likes and was selected as the message that best condensed the event's theme.
Although they faced the same theme, all 9 teams' answers were different. Team 5 said "We use the freedom gained from AI as a new sock to create a better world," comparing it to Dobby's socks in Harry Potter to explain the transformation of labor value in the AI era. Team 9 contrasted solitude and togetherness with "Alone change impossible. Together win success innovation." (We can't change the world alone, change is together). Team 4 included "We make miracle from brave in Shinhan," directly embodying the identity of Shinhan as a space in their sentence.
Interestingly, the 9 different sentences ultimately converged in the same language. The most frequently appearing keywords were BRAVE (courage) 7 times, CHANGE·CHALLENGE (change·challenge) 6 times, OVERCOME·MIRACLE 5 times, WORLD·world 5 times, COLLABORATE·together 4 times. Without anyone deciding it, the words that startup members commonly voiced were challenge, change, courage, and together. It was a moment when a shared sense of purpose naturally became visualized.
Why Word Challenge for Startup Events?
What startup event organizers want is not simply killing time. They want CEOs meeting for the first time to truly connect beyond awkwardness, share a sense of common purpose, and have the core values pursued by the event remain in memory. Word Challenge designs all four of these simultaneously.
Solving the awkwardness of first meetings! Instead of forced self-introductions, a shared task of mission execution opens the door to conversation. Natural collaboration occurs while finding words and creating sentences, completing the icebreaker.
Networking between startups! Members mixed by team share opinions to create one result. Rather than formal networking that only exchanges business cards, the experience of completing something together increases the density of relationships.
Shared sense of common purpose and teamwork! The structure of gathering scattered words and responding in one sentence teaches the essence of collaboration directly. The convergence of the 9 teams' keywords on challenge and change in this event is the proof.
Core value internalization! Instead of having participants read the message of challenge and sense of mission from Shinhan S²BRIDGE in a document, they directly interpreted and completed it in sentences. Messages that participants create themselves last much longer than messages delivered by others.
What's Different About It From Cringe Recreational Activities?
Bingo games or sports day recreation led by an MC depend on the host, and participants remain as audiences. This is why CEOs and executives find it difficult to actively participate.
Word Challenge is different. All participants directly find QR codes and move, perform their roles, and achieve shared goals with their teams. It's not instructor-centered but a structure where each participant becomes the protagonist. Immersive technologies like AR, QR, chatbots, and photo authentication draw out engaging participation, and it can be run simultaneously from 10-person small meetups to 400-person large conferences without spatial constraints.
It's also important that it's a technology-based offline experience suited for a rapidly changing era. It's no longer possible to create immersion through education where you sit and only listen and watch. The experience of standing up and playing directly makes the difference.
Why Samsung, Hyundai, LG, Mirae Asset, Shinhan, and KB Already Chose It
If you hesitate because Word Challenge is a program you've heard for the first time, just look at the already validated adoption cases. RealWorld's participatory workshop is a technology-based educational solution adopted by leading domestic companies and institutions including Samsung, Hyundai, LG, Mirae Asset, Shinhan, and KB.
Word Challenge alone has been used for a wide range of purposes including organizational culture internalization at Samsung SDS, core value education at Hanwha Aerospace and Samil Accounting, new hire and junior employee education at POSCO and Amorepacific, team leader leadership education at Hyundai Glovis, and scholarship student networking at Lotte Scholarship Foundation and Korea Scholarship Foundation. Shinhan Financial Group and Mirae Asset used RealWorld as a networking program, while SK Hynix used it for DEI education.
Over 4 million cumulative play experiences, average on-site satisfaction of 9.8 points, and 30+ purpose-specific contents. Numbers speak to trust.
An Experience That Satisfies Both Young Members and Executives and Team Leaders
Another strength of RealWorld Word Challenge is its satisfaction across generations.
The method of finding QR codes on smartphones and solving missions is familiar and enjoyable for young members comfortable with digital. As a trendy experience completely different from conventional lecture-based education, the immersion of Gen Z is particularly high.
At the same time, the participation and satisfaction of team leaders and executives who rarely participated in bingo games are also very high. This is because the activity is not something cringe-worthy, but meaningful collaboration in solving a shared mission together. In fact, at this Shinhan S²BRIDGE Daegu event, participants of various career levels blended in one team and gave 5-star ratings. This is the result created by an experience where no one falls back as an audience and everyone becomes a player.
Try Changing Your Next Startup Event Like This
If you're an organizer preparing a startup meetup day, demo day, resident company networking, startup support organization event, or a CEO-targeted workshop, I recommend reviewing RealWorld Word Challenge instead of awkward bingo games.
The experience where CEOs meeting for the first time naturally connect, share a sense of common purpose, and complete the event's core message in sentences themselves. 64 participants at Shinhan S²BRIDGE Daegu proved this with a 100% completion rate and satisfaction rating of 5.0.
The words gathered pointed in one direction — Our Challenge for a Changing World.
Are you curious about RealWorld's technology-based participatory education content?
https://business.realworld.to/edu