1415T2g1 South Korea/Reflection
South Korea
| Day 2 |
Contents
Day 1: Reflections
Quick Introduction of JJS Media
Learning Points from JJS Media
- Product is important, but don’t forget the team – with a team that is able to synergized each other’s ability to produce the best result, it will increase the overall value of the product and makes everything more easier
- Common in Asia to get your idea stolen – if you have an idea, you should always have the motivation to kick-start your project as soon as possible
- Knowing the demographic is key to marketing your product – with a specific target audience in mind, a deep understanding on the demographic trends in a market can help speed up your marketing
- Leaders in a start-up have to be confident – by being confident, it creates an ripple effect around the team which can be essential to the success of a start-up
Quick Introduction of FiveThirty
Learning Points from FiveThirty
- Greater interest in your project if the problem affects you directly – from our Q&A session with Mr. Lee, he mentioned that the problem identified by the team will generate greater interest and bond the team if each member is directly affected by the problem as they see a great need to solve the problem
- Importance of a clear vision and goal – to bring your company forward, the team must have a clearly-defined goal which is formulated and agreed by each team member
- Desperation propels you forward – in a start-up, there are many times where you will encounter problems which you put you on the brink of failure. However, we should are take an optimistic look to the problems and see them as a motivation to being your company forward
The director of international business of JJS Media, CJ was approachable and funny. She explained briefly about how a typical live performance is being implemented and highlighted several speculations and guesses when promoters invite a particular artist to the country and how MyMusicTaste filled that void. MyMusicTaste helped artists to explore into new markets that they have never known about as well as guarantees the demand for a certain artist’s live performance. She shared with us many interesting stories about how she was persuaded to be part of the company and the setbacks that she has faced and how her CEO has helped her tide over that failure. The way that MyMusicTaste grew organically through referrals from different users has shown that the power of word of mouth is really a strong marketing strategy for the JJS Media. I feel that the developers and founders have to manage a community around their startup and leverage on the initial user base to bring in more like minded individuals into the platform. I actually struggled to create a sizeable community when developing a web application for a module in SMU. I would really want to know more from the startups on the marketing strategies and effectiveness of their most effective marketing platform and how did the utilize it to bring in the best results. She emphasized the importance of having a great team with synergy and that even if the idea was not good, it will still turn our great eventually. I do agree that having a great team is good and it was one of the factors that sometimes dissuades me from creating a startup on my own. FiveThirty was a gracious host and welcomed us with gifts. Zim Car was an interesting concept, being the middle man to source for resources to help their users move to a new home. They focused heavily on user experience as their unique selling point to differentiate themselves with the competition and that they have a first mover advantage when it comes to this idea. However, they might want to handle issues such as people not showing up to the job or vehicles that are not working properly to move the items and what is the contingency when such issues arise.
JJS Media
C.J proceeded to elaborate on the hurdles start-ups used to face. Firstly, she believe that the act of being able to convince potential investors to invest on an idea is a difficult task. This is because money is an important cash flow for start-ups. However, such investments are hard to come by as investors are often skeptical of ideas which are not pitched in the “right way’. Hence, in order to convince investors, C.J. highlighted that it is extremely essential for one to be able to visualize and believe in his own ideas before he will be able to convince others. This is often the most difficult hurdle as the founder of the startup will also have to be willing to go without any pay during the early development of the start-up to ensure that the staffs are paid. The second hurdle was the importance of knowing the demographics of the target group. C.J. explained that failure to understand and analyse the market trend can be extremely detrimental too since such work often incur lots of costs. Thirdly, competitors. C.J shared about how JJS’s first application, the Mironi (i.e. somewhat like Spotify), had failed due to competition. Before Mironi could go big, it was replicated by a competitor and this has caused JJS Media to incur losses. As there was no legal protection to prevent such an acts, JJS Media had decided against suing the competitor. Nonetheless, besides these hurdles, there were also success stories which C.J shared. After learning from their mistake on Mironi, and identifying a real need for an application to bring international concerts to fans all around the world, JJS Media created the MyMusicTaste application. This application basically allowed fans to select their artists and venue, get their friends to vote for it and crowd fund for the concert. This allows JJS Media to foresee the demand for this particular artist and convince promoters to pitch in their efforts to ensure that the concert can be held.
This was a great learning experience as it has provided me with many insights such as how to foresee the various challenges of embarking on a startup. It also taught me about the importance of having a clear goal for the start-up. This is to help the founder ensure that the start-up is progressing in the right direction.
Five-Thirty
The CEO, Mr Sanghwa Chung mentioned that the purpose of Zim Car is to help single families / people ease the chore of moving house with ease. It will include the provision of the Zim box which consists of all the essentials needed for packing such as gloves, tapes and others. In addition, the Zim car will also be provided with 2 Zim men to do the moving. All these will be done at a affordable and competitive price. He mentioned that he believed that the demand for such services is high as Korea has a huge consumer base which comes from single families / people and he strongly believes that the differentiating factor from Zim Car and other similar application will be its customer services, creative Zim Box idea and its competitive price.
The CEO also introduced to us Mr Lee, the company’s no3 in decision making. Mr Lee shared that he used to have a comfortable job in the aerospace industry but left to pursue his passion for start-ups. Nonetheless, he mentioned that he had met with several failures in his start-ups, one of which he failed because he had a lack of passion for the application he is doing. He also mentioned that if given a chance to start all over again, he will not want to pursue a start-up as with his family now, he has numerous responsibilities to hold and pursuing in a start-up does not guarantee him a constant cash flow.
From this, I learnt that perhaps, what he said was indeed true as under circumstances, passion has to take the back sit when survival and responsibilities are of up most importance at the moment of time for the entrepreneur. I also learned that because of such issues, it would definitely be more favorable for me to experience working in a start-up when I am young as whether the start up will succeed highly depends on the level of commitment that it founders place in it.
JJS Media
Prior to JJS talk, we did a tour around the offices such as the content creation lab and hub. These 2 offices reminded me of our very own SMU labs. Both offices adopt the idea of an open concept working space to allow ideas to flow endlessly and to create opportunities to allow them to communicate with their peers easily. As these offices are funded by the government, it dawned upon me how supportive their government is in encouraging start ups in Korea. The government has been pumping in a lot of resources, such as renting out office spaces at a low cost or even providing it for free, to encourage start ups in Korea so I'm really excited to visit other companies to understand better how the government supported them in their start ups! I learnt from CJ that the government sends start ups to tech conference to meet investors and gives them the opportunity to connect and network with the big companies. This gives the start ups a chance to pitch their ideas to investors and get seed funding should they be interested.
Apart from that, the talk by JJS Media taught me several things.
Firstly, the team is very important, especially the leader. The CEO of JJS Media was determined on getting the speaker CJ - currently the director of international business of JJS - into the team. After multiple rejections, what finally convinced her was the CEO's confidence in his product. He was confident and sure that his product can solve a real world problem of cancelled concert tickets.
So what makes a good leader? A good leader is someone who knows how to motivate his team when they feel unmotivated and are facing low self esteem due to set backs. On the other hand, a good team has to consist of staffs who believe in the company's vision and mission. When their vales are aligned, employees will no longer feel part of the company and treat the company as their own company instead. This will motivate and drive them to work harder in order to achieve their goals.
Five thirty
Similar to what JJS mentioned, Mr Chung and Mr Lee also shared that in a start up, it is important to focus completely on our goals and solution. He also emphasised that passion is very important to keep one going. He too followed his passion and left his stable paying job to chase his passion to create applications.
I also learnt that people are the most important resources, thus it is important to keep the employees happy. I feel that it is more effective to keep the employees happy when the company and them share a common goal. With aligned goals, the team will be more driven and motivated to achieve their goals.
Based on Zimcar's start up idea, I realised that a start up idea need not be something extraordinary. It could be something simple or has already been done before, but use a different approach to repackaging the same idea again.
More than just your passion, you need to create a culture at which people would be willing to work hard with you and feel that the company is also their company. JJS Media said that the culture in the company is that they feel like a family, while FiveThirty said that it is important to make people happy so that they would be willing to work.
The slight different between the two companies is that JJS Media seems to have a clearer focus, targeting the global population who likes K-Pop while on the other hand, FiveThirty has 3 apps which are differ from one another. I believe that it is important to have a focus/ clear goal in a company, especially when a company first starts because they have limited resources, but as they grow, they will be able to diversify.
In short, both companies tell us that if you don’t have the passion for it, you won’t be able to continue your business because in a start-up, often you have to put more energy and time to grow your business. Finding a team which are driven and love the company and building a culture which makes them feel happy are also important aspects. If the goal of the company aligns with the personal goal of the people, they would be willing to work an extra mile for the company. The team, the culture, and the passion are definitely critical in starting a business.
JJS Media
JJS Media created a crowdfunding platform called MyMusicTaste which helps artistes and promoters accurately measure the quantifiable demand and purchasing power of fans for global artistes to hold concerts in their countries. Previously, this was done through guesswork and gut feel, which increased the risk for both artistes and promoters. The speaker, CJ, raised many valid and interesting points which are critical to improving the chances for success for a startup:
- An awesome team is better than a good product because investors are more likely to tolerate failure because they know the team will eventually deliver in the end.
- In Seoul (and especially in China), other companies and competitors with more capital can easily copy a startup’s idea and force it out of the market. Thus, to succeed, it is crucial to create a product that is extremely difficult to imitate.
- Even though the speaker is a fanatic fan girl, she is able to hone her hobby effectively to market to MyMusicTaste’s targeted audience, who are also mainly fanatic fans who are eager to meet their artistes.
- It is crucial to find a focus for a startup (e.g. MyMusicTaste initially focused on the Kpop market only) as resources should be pooled into a single focus to form the startup’s unique selling point.
- It is extremely important to have effective leader(s) who are willing to sacrifice everything to ensure the survival of the startup. Such selfless behavior will no doubt inspire the employees effectively.
- Free and popular collaboration tools widely used by startups
- Trello, an easy to use project management/collaboration app
- KakaoTalk, a popular instant messaging app in Korea with features similar to WeChat
- Slack, another popular instant messaging app which effectively synchronizes messages between desktop and mobile devices.
FiveThirty
FiveThirty’s latest app consist of ZimBox,ZimMan,and ZimCar, which represent different components required for moving house for single families (getting empty boxes to contain belongings, getting movers to move stuff, and getting a vehicle to contain the belongings). Mr Chung and Mr Lee raised many interesting points with regards to executing a successful startup:
- Having a concrete idea or vision from the start is essential for success, or else the company will not have a clear direction to advance.
- The startup creator(s) must have enough passion for the product or service and never be deterred by failure.
- In today’s age, sometimes it is just sufficient to reinvent the logistics and perception for existing services for a new idea. For example, Zimcar’s idea focuses on flat prices, single point of contact, and good quality control as compared to similar house moving services which usually require extensive negotiating to overcome the longstanding problem of overcharging.
JJS Media
JJS Media is an interesting events company that first finds the performances that people and communities are interested in, before liaising with the various parties to bring the performers in. This provides performers with a more accurate guarantee and ensure that the concerts staged will have an audience for it.
The lady that greeted us went by the name of CJ. She is the director for marketing, and one of the key employees of the company. Prior to that, she was part of the entertainment scene, handling concerts and performance organising. The current project is an app called MyMusicTaste. One of the main drivers for the creation of this app is that many concerts are cancelled, with organisers having to then figure out what went wrong behind these concerts, often leaving these organisers having to figure out if the problem lies with inaccurate demand predictions, or inappropriate pricing issues.
One of the key learning points is that it is important to understand their advantage and leverage on it to help businesses create a beach head in their market. Being a Korean company, they naturally have easier access to K-Pop groups. Therefore, they made the decision to first pick up Korean groups, and try to market them to determine places to hold concerts. This provided them with a competitive advantage that other concert organising companies might not have — access to the Korean markets. They have also decided to focus on K-Pop and the related genres. This helps to the app community to grow organically due to the nature of fans liking and requesting for similar groups, growing the app’s user base.
Another key point is the important of leadership. The leader of the company serves as the key motivator, the one that drives the company. The leader has to lead, and to show himself as a role model for other employees to look up to. The example given was when CJ was overseas and encountered her first failure, she was close to giving up on everything. However, it was due to her CEO’s present at the scene that touched her heart, and made her realise that he is a good person to work for.
Five Thirty
Five Thirty is a mobile app development company. Its current project is focused on helping people move, providing a one stop service for packing and delivering.
The key thing to note is that for the company, there are 2 CEOs operating the company, one driving the technical side while the other one, the business side. They mentioned that the way for them to resolve conflict, figuring out who makes the call is through constant communication, and to have a third person as a mediator to objectively look at the 2 conflicting viewpoints that the 2 different CEOs might have.
However, I am still not unconvinced by the business model for scaling. The ZimMan and ZimCar are both crowd-sourced resources. This means that there is no assurance that the app will be able to have sufficient resources to meet user demands. Furthermore, there could be legal and other considerations when attempting to push these to other countries (e.g. in Singapore, trucks and lorries are required to be registered to companies, which could serve as a problem since most company vehicles drivers would not want to moonlight with company vehicles).
The United States has long led the way as the leader in high tech innovations. This is largely attributed to the fertile ground it has provided for tech startups - access to capital and a culture that celebrates risk taking. However, there is one city that is developing itself into another important tech hub, the next Silicon Valley: Seoul.
The number of startups operating in South Korea quadrupled from approximately 3500 in the early 2000s to 15,401 in 2008. With increasing governmental support and an influx in foreign and local investors, the number of start-ups readily doubled to 28,763 in 2013.
As we embark on our first company visit, I really hope that these 5 days will help me understand and gain an appreciation of the factors that shaped Korea’s tech start-up scene, which used to be non-existent in the early 1980s. The first company, JJS Media, sets as a good example of the opportunities and challenges faced by a start-up. “My Music Taste” is developed by the JJS team with the intention of disrupting the concert ticketing industry. I personally feel that developing such technologies work as a double-edge sword. On one hand, the company is able to target a big and wide market, which gives them the potential to scale exponentially. On the other hand, such technologies run the risk of inviting attacks from companies which are going to be affected by the disruption. This could be in the form of conglomerates buying out the product, or worse still, replicate the technology and start squeezing the start-ups dry.
Despite that, I am inclined towards believing that JJS Media will succeed and grow to become a very successful company in the next 5 to 10 years for the following reasons. Firstly, the company has garnered support from stronghold investors including Samsung. The presence of such investors will not only spark greater confidence in potential investors, but also acts as a protection towards the tragedy of start-ups being crushed by the giants. Secondly, the team is made up of diverse individuals, each expert in their own field. Their members comprises of geniuses graduating from elite schools such as KAIST and Carnegie Mellon. Yet interestingly, their interview selection is based largely on being able to portray critical thinking skills over academic grades. The team dynamics is hence a good blend of both the geniuses as well as the critical thinkers. Lastly, the company has made very clear progression steps for their future. To ride on the advantage of being an early adopter of this technology, I feel that it is very wise for the company to roll out their plans to expand to the US and China market at the end of this year. This is a very well-timed move, especially after JJS had recently received their Series A funding.
The second company, Zim Car, provided another perspective of the nature of start-ups. The implementation of this application is not exactly one that is disruptive to the entire ecosystem, neither is it a game changer. Instead, it is going back to the fundamentals of using technology to boost an existing business model by having new features that will help increase customer satisfaction and usability. The concept behind making package delivering easy and hassle free is not new. However, I believe that Zim Car successfully identified that Koreans are in a constant quest for efficiency in every sphere of their life, and they boasts the highest smartphone ownership rate in the world. Thus, leveraging on the mobile platform, alongside understanding the users’ concerns, needs and wants will be a key to their success.
JJS Media
JJS Media is the first company we visited. I was really impressed by the speaker who introduced herself as CJ. She is a very charismatic, confident and capable lady. She mentioned that you got to be confident in both your decision and your product, as you need to first trust your own product before you can convince others. JJS latest product is MyMusicTaste and their three main stakeholders are the artists, fans and promoters. The MyMusicTaste act as a platform for fans to indicate their interest in attending their idol's concert which allow the artists and promoters to locate the artist fan base reducing the risk and disappointment of the promoters, artists and fans.
Unlike their competitors, JJS Media focus on K-POP in particular, as they believe that being focus on specific genre, JJS will be able to provide a better service quality to their users as there will be less variation.
She also shared the importance of having a great team, during her sharing session she emphasize a lot on the importance of having a great team.
Her group of co-founders shares the same interest, music, and with that common interest they are able to understand the problems faced by their stakeholders and come out with the best solution that solve the problem faced by them.
All in all, my take away from JJS is that you got to be confident, responsible and courageous to be a great leader. Everyone in the team needs to trust and believe in the product in order for others to believe in your product. Besides having a great product what’s more important is having a great team who shares a common goals and interests in order to succeed in long term. Understand your target audience best is to have a specific primary persona that you want to build your products for in order to provide a better solution without large variation.
FiveThirty
Mr Sanghwa Chung, CEO of Zimcar and his friend Mr. Lee shared with us his experience and views in building a startup. They shared with us the importance of having an alignment between the employees and employers. And the importance of recruiting people that value adds to your company. They also shared the importance of following your genuine idea, which means build what you are interested in building and not build something with a profit driven mentality.
All in all, my take away from this talk is that to be able to be fully committed to a product you need to have passion for it. Never build a product having profit as your main priority because “sometimes money kills your passion”
Fuelled by South Korea's rich Kpop music culture, JJS Media came up with its very own application, MyMusicTaste, to solve the problem of concerts cancelled halfway. By understanding and catering to the needs of fans, artistes and promoting companies, MyMusicTaste was able to achieve a synergistic effect for a highly profitable revenue model. Because JJS Media was able to identify such a market gap in the live music entertainment industry, the unique positioning and social value of the application allow it to be one of the few Korean startups to expand in the global market. This is an admirable achievement for a startup idea that has only been established for a mere 2 years. As such, I feel that the most important starting point of entrepreneurship is to identify market gaps. Such as Paypal that makes online payments easier, Youtube that enables video-sharing, and Instagram that provides ease of mobile photo editing and sharing. Only by adding value in people's lives can the company attain real financial value.
Contrary to the focus that JJS Media had with its only MyMusicTaste application, FiveThirty is a company that has several projects under development concurrently. Despite their sharing, I am still apprehensive about the future sustainability of the application. For example, the origami idea may be interesting, but revenue streams are rather limited. In addition, the different teams of the company may be too fragmented, resulting in no clear focus in any single industry for the company brand. Hence, I feel that there should still be a distinct focus for a startup to prevent its limited resources from being spread too thin at the initial stage.
JJS Media
There were two key takeaways from JJS Media’s execution of a brilliant idea.
Recruitment process
I’ve had my first taste of recruiting from the employer’s point of view when my start-up participated in a programme that allowed us to recruit interns from Hong Kong universities. Having been through previous job interviews (as the applicant), I had asked questions that were previously posed to me. However, these were very typical interview questions (tell me about a time when you had to overcome an obstacle, what are your greatest strengths and weaknesses, etc.), which did not find to be very effective in distinguishing good candidates from better ones.
What’s interesting is CJ shared that JJS Media is not concerned about your grades or past experiences, but whether you’re teachable, whether you want to learn and go the extra mile. The specific questions that she asks in an interview were especially useful, such as “Come up with 5 marketing ideas to market Block B”, “Find the cheapest way to get from Kroea to Papua New Guinea in the next 5 minutes”. I felt these were very practical ways to distinguish whether an applicant would be able to perform in an actual job situation.
Customer segmentation process
CJ shared how even fans of different music groups differed (e.g. rock fans vs. K-pop fans). Even within K-pop fans, girl group fans differed from boy group fans. They made a strategic decision to focus on a specific group of fans – k-pop boy group fans (evident from its initial focus on Lunafly and Nu’est), deducing that the fans of these groups will also like other k-pop boy groups, and so will their friends.
Such insight into consumer segmentation and behaviour is important to the development of a strong marketing and user acquisition strategy – which would be critical to the success of the start-up. We may often overlook insights like these, perhaps due to a lack of deep understanding of the consumers’ psyche.
FiveThirty
The biggest takeaway I had from FiveThirty was their ability to break down a huge idea into three parts and launch them separately as ZIM BOX, ZIM MAN, ZIM CAR. Most of the time, we come up with a great idea that could be massive – and gets even more complex as the idea develops – AND we want to do them all at once. Which isn’t smart, feasible or strategic at all. FiveThirty had a great idea of making the process of moving house as painless and fuss-free as possible. Yet, they didn’t approach this as one massive project, but three smaller parts to a bigger picture that they will work on progressively.
JJS Media
We were greeted by a lively lady by the initials of CJ who shared with us about JJS Media and the service they currently provide.
JJS Media created a service called MyMusicTaste which uses technology to bridge the gap between different stakeholders in the music industry. Curious of the reason behind cancelled concerts, the founders gathered that such incidents happen when the planning team and the artists are unsure of the preferences of music lovers. Hence, by using an application to find out about the music tastes of fans, they have managed to satisfy the demand and supply for concerts. The application has thus effectively reduced the number of cancelled concerts.
MyMusicTaste was started in 2013 and the service currently has about 400,000 users with majority coming from South America and Europe. The service has helped artists find places where their fans want them to have concerts and JJS Media has held 50 concerts in 25 countries up to date. Through word of mouth from fans, the service was able to gather users quickly under 2 years without the need to market the service themselves. The company is currently focusing their efforts on MyMusicTaste and has no plans to further develop another service.
We had a fun session with CJ and these are my takeaways from JJS Media.
- “You’re the only person that thinks that this is going to work”. So you need to be able to convince people that your product/service will benefit them. Hence, the ability to convince is an important skill to have for an entrepreneur.
- A leader’s role is very important. Responsibility, courage, leadership are traits that a leader should possess.
- A strong team is necessary to complement the product/service that you sell. Find people that share the same interest and have passion for the work that they do.
- Good word of mouth is the best way to gain user base.
FiveThirty
With the motto “We Make Life Better”, FiveThirty has come up with an origami application, a part-time job seeking application, and an application to help with the chore of moving house.
Mr. Sanghwa Chung from FiveThirty shared with us about their services called ZimBox . ZimMan . ZimCar – These services provided by the company focuses on helping single families reduce the trouble of moving house. ZimBox provides all essentials needed for packing and ZimMan brings helpers while ZimCar transports the packed items. The company does not plan to patent the idea as they believe that competition will help to bring about greater awareness of such service. Contrary to JJS Media, FiveThirty plans on having many applications to benefit groups of people with various needs. I’ve learned from FiveThirty that competition is not necessarily bad for companies.
We had another speaker Mr. Lee who has various experience with start-ups and he previously held a stable job in aerospace engineering. He currently is developing an application to aid parents with special needs children. This idea stemmed from the birth of his son who is disabled and he is working on the application to guide parents who are facing the same situation as him.
With past experience of failed start-up attempts, he shared with us that passion is what really keeps him going. However, sometimes money kills the passion. In seeking co-workers, he too believes that it is important to find someone with interest in the work that he does and having goals is a must. The trade-off of working in a start-up is that there will be less time to meet friends and there is a wider gap in interests.
The two companies that we visited today were very welcoming and I look forward to visiting Pristone, Seoul National University, KBAA, and FuturePlay tomorrow!
On day one of our company visit, we visited to 2 companies – JJS Media and FiveThirty. From the sharing of JJS Media, they have encountered mix of success and failures. That is most common barriers that most of the technologies will face and get through of it. From the sharing of their flagship app “My Music Taste”, the important thing I learnt was they all have put so much passion with what they are doing and focusing on that only. The person said in order to succeed for a startup, all the team members should stand out to take responsibility and leadership. They are working with trust and believe with one another and not restricting with rules and micro management.
The second and last visit of the day is to FiveThirty. They are working on a platform that offers easy and cost effective solution for house moving service. And it is specifically towards to singles and single families. From the founder and CEO of the company shared us about his service and company to us. I learnt from that company visit is it is good to identify a concrete problem and focus to solve on that in starting a startup. He shared to us that it is more manageable to handle and know market response by making a small start. Once it has a good potential, try to accelerate further and push towards the main goal. I have seen that they have so much passion working on the project and much efforts.
JJS Media
As JJS office is not open when we arrive thus a lady brought us to tour around the building. The building consist of few levels. Mainly the 9th floor which is open to anyone to use. The lady mentioned that students can use that area as well. And I felt that the area looks like SMU Labs back in Singapore. And at the 7th floor, it’s the Content Korea Lab Gyeonggi. They have a recording studio as well as a big 3D printer! There are currently 28 start-ups and they can stay there for 2 years max. The minimum period is 6 months, but there will be an interview again on the 5th month. Unfortunately, this program is mainly for Korean.
The representative from JJS Media is a lady called CJ. JJS Media have a product called MyMusicTaste. Artists and promoters can use this application to measure the demand while the fans can request for the concerts that they want. Currently they are targeting K-Pop. That’s because they are from the same country and that K-Pop stars prefer to work with Korean company as compared to foreign companies. However, CJ also mentioned that they are preparing to flip, which means that their HQ will be at US, and Korea will only be the branch.
From CJ, I learnt a lot. According to CJ, the biggest hinder is to convince others to believe that the product is good and the team will be able to support it. Thus, the team is very important. They select their team member by sitting down with them and look at their personality. They will only hire if there have something that is in-line with the company. Hence, grades doesn’t matter to JJS Media. Also, CJ felt that you should not be frustrated when she calls you at 5am on a Saturday for work related issue. If you will be frustrated, don’t go into the start-up industry.
She also compare Korea start-up ecosystem against Singapore and US. The Korea government provide help to the start-ups. Example JJS Media is located in a government owned building. Their rental fee for 6 month is USD1000 only. However, this benefits are more towards the Korean citizen. On the other hand, Singapore too have government funding. But they benefits the foreigners as well. And most importantly, people in Singapore knows English! That is something that Korea do not really have. As for US, especially Silicon Valley, it is the best place to get funding if you have a great idea. There are a lot of VC there and “they are just waiting to throw their money in”.
FiveThirty
The latest product/service that FiveThirty do is the ZimCar, ZimMan and the ZimBox. This is targeted for the single family who need help in moving house and they are flexible in time (meaning 24 hours). The ZimCar provide the vehicle to carry the items and will cost 49800 krw (S$61.69). The ZimMan is the mover and will cost 33000 krw (S$40.88) and ZimBox is provide the box to store the items as well as the necessity that is needed, such as bubble wraps. It cost 25000 krw (S$30.97) each. There is a bundle price of 249800 krw (S$309.42) which consist of 1 ZimCar, 2 ZimMan and 1 ZimBox. FiveThirty are not worried that others will follow them and be their competitors. Instead, they mentioned something that inspire me: “People can follow them. But they (FiveThirty) started first. So they have an advantage. When others are following them, they still need to get the contacts and material, but they (FiveThirty) had all the materials already, thus able to do more and go further than others”. From the speech, I learnt that to have a higher success rate in start-up, we need to focus on our passion. Passion is the thing that keep us moving and to push our team. They felt that if you are below 25, it’s okay for you to try doing a start-up first. However, if you are more than 25, you should do some work first before proceeding to start a new business. They also agreed that it is not easy to attract employee. Unlike big companies, start-up generally can’t provide a high salary to their employees. Thus, in start-ups, the company will tend to give their employee some stocks instead.
JJS Media - How Creative Startup can excel
JJS Media is where Music meets Tech. They have been building the best concert platform - fan initiated concert. They started out with small group of Korean boyband of LUNAFLY then gain recognition to work with bigger and bigger group such as Block B. The interesting thing about Korea Kpop group is that they may not be popular in Korea, yet they maybe very popular in other countries such as Europe countries. This is the case happened to LUNAFLY. The success with LUNAFLY has acted as leverage to boost JJS confidence in My Music Taste. MyMusicTaste solves the mysterious problem of matching demand of fans and supply of concerts. It is always hard for the organizer to judge whether it is profitable to bring in one artist and conduct a concert cause there is no indication of the fans will turn up. As CJ has shared, due to this mysterious problem Justin Bier failed his concert in Korea. Justin Biere is famous world wide but he is not popular in Korea at all. Similarly, LUNAFLY is not popular in Korea at all but they are so popular in Europe counties. Through the platform of MyMusicTaste, concert is demanded by fan and shared and promoted by the fans themselves in order to be able to see their favorite artist. This is beneficial to both fans and artist as it erase the frustration of fan not being to see their favorite artist and the artist is able to have more concert. Especially it is very profitable to service provider, JJS. The application is very scalable, noted that the music market is dominated by AEG and Live Music. Furthermore, there are many ways MyMusicTaste can generate money, e.g. charge promoter in term of commission, sell ticket directly or take guarantee. Thus, the revenue model is very versatile and profitable. MyMusicTaste currently has 400 thousands user base in which 30% is in South America, 30% is in Europe and the rest is all over the world. It has successfully conducted many Kpop concerts in Europe and USA and it has just secured a 3.5 million deal. Currently, in order to expand, JJS Media will flip the company in which the headquarter will be in USA and Korea office will be just a branch of the company, yet most of the activities are still based in Korea. The company is aiming at big picture, JJS Media don’t want to stop at only music related matters, it want to go beyond to any prominent speakers or any other possible matters. Our host is CJ - Head of International Business Development, she works for Viki before it is acquired. It is interesting how she got into the JJS Media team. She told us about the perseverance of the CEO in convincing her to his startup company - JJS Media. “The reason I joined JJS Media is because my CEO convinced me that I am going to be the next Bill Gate” quoted CJ. From her own experience, she stressed that how important of an A-Team to JJS Media. Through her sharing, I can feel that the CEO plays a very important role in steering everyone including CJ toward the growth of JJS Media. For all startup, it is always difficult to convince people about your product and that your team will able to grow it. CJ stressed that even your product is good; if your team is suck then there is low change you are going to succeed. In addition, it is also extremely important for the founder to convince his team members to believe in the product and grow it together with him. Failure and slump are inevitable in startup, thus it is important for you to be passionate and perseverant. I am very impressed by CJ’s concluding remark: believe in your product, lead your people and do whatever it takes to bring this company on. When asked how people in JJS Media works together, CJ shared that in the company “we trust each other that they are doing what they are supposed to do” and people share the same google drive to check on each other’s calendar. I feel that the working environment at all startup is generally very free and people are left at their freedom to what they want. I believe that there is always a pros and cons for every single approach, and that this “free” approach may work better for JJS Media as it is a creative company.
FiveThirty
FiveThirty is a startup company by an ex- aerospace engineer. The current products of FiveThirty are Zimcar, Zimbox and Zimman. All three Zim provides the services of car, box and man to move house in Seoul. The company observes the trend that single family becomes a trend in Seoul and it is getting harder to get the boxes to move house as the post office closes early before the end of office working hour. In short, the demand for moving house service has increased in Seoul due to the raise of single family and it is getting harder to move house. FiveThirty jumps into the market to provide the service, yet it breaks down the service chain to Zimcar, Zimbox and Zimmen so that giving consumer more choice and freedom in choosing the service. They can just use Zimmen or Zimbox or Zimcar separately, but they also can use them all and FiveThirty can become one-stop provider of moving house services. FiveThirty has attained certain success in its market, yet difficulties still remains with challenge to match demand and supply of car and service man when in need. I am personally attracted to the sharing of CEO about his life experience. He didn’t start FiveThirty with Zimbox, Zimcar and Zimmen but rather an app to help parents keep track of understand the medical report of their children. It started out due to his own personal need as his son was not well. He gave up his prestigious aerospace engineer career and started something new. Surprisingly, he said at that moment the decision was not that hard, especially with his son’s condition, he felt like doing something else to his life. Through the up and down of his start up experience, he shared that even when you are patience and have a concrete plan, you still can fail your business. Therefore, you should focus on your genuine idea - the idea that you may give up everything
Learning lesson: Does opening up a wide range of facilities translate into the development of more startups?
I was very impressed with the amount of help and facilities provided by the Korean government. What intrigued me the most was the type of facilities that was provided to the startups. There was a myriad of advanced facilities ranging from 3D printer to the entire broadcasting set for startups involved in the field of music content. On top of that, they also offer Free booking of the space , IMAC computer and co-working space for anyone who wants to use it for brainstorming their startup ideas or mingle with other startup founders. This is simply amazing. However, I couldn’t help but compare it the Singapore government. Undeniably, our government has pump in a lot of funding to help our Singapore startups. What differs the type of help provided by the Korean government to the Singapore government is opening the booking of such facilities space to the public. I reflected deeper and pounded about the effectiveness of opening such public space to the public. I thought to myself.. will opening such free space to Singaporean really help to drive more entrepreneurial activity in the society or will students to study for their examinations use it. As we all know, being a student, we are constantly looking for alternative study places to study. So if the government opened such services, it would be taken advantage of by the students. Moreover, we have to also take into account the context of the demographics and population size of both countries. Korean is such a huge country with a large land space; students have abundant of places to study. Koreans also don’t have the unique “kiasu mentality” that Singaporeans have. Hence, this is also a strong reasons why opening such services to the public will not be taken advantage of by the people.
Learning point: It’s all about your family/team
I believe that certain tasks lie beyond a founder's capabilities. So it's vital to have the right partners and team members involved. Having a team that believes in each other, and have executives that are willing to fight day and night for their cause and support them, is the most important thing for the company.
Initially, I was a little bit demotivated because I spent up to 6 months looking for the last member in my team. Thankfully, I got to listen to the motivational talk given by this speaker. According to her, one of the biggest challenges is convincing people to join your team and endorsing your idea. I found this sentence very relatable to me because I am currently in the exact position as the CEO. I have a great idea and I have an amazing partner. We are just looking for one more technical person to join our team. I have approached a few potential developers and I can comprehend how difficult it is to convince people to join your team. Usually, people want to see results before deciding whether to join your startup. Success can come in the form of potential clients you have secured, the number of competition you have won etc.. However, I have achieved none of the above.
Nonetheless, I strongly believe that with a strong team in place, we will definitely succeed in the future. Ideas can be changed, ideas can be edited but you need that “dream team” to make that happen. Hence, I’m relieved to know that startups all over the world are facing the exact problem and it is perfectly alright that I am facing the exact same problem. As the saying goes, a successful startup is made up of 10% idea and 90% execution. Startups come and go for a lot of reasons, but a lot of good ideas fail because the founding team fails to take into consideration the people factors. It’s one thing to come up with the great idea, it’s another to pull together the right group of people to execute it. It’s not always going to be easy to do, but it’s absolutely the most likely factor that’s going to determine your startup’s success or failure. I am glad I finally got to understand this concept through the motivational talk from this speaker.
The culture of the companies we visited today are very much different from Singaporean companies. Usually in Singapore, it’s so competitive and cooperation was at a minimum level. Even within the company itself, people just dealt with things separately and combine whatever they had later. However, what I saw today while we were visiting JJS Media was something really hard to emulate in Singapore. Co-working spaces are available for freelancers in the Hub and for designers at Content Korea Lab. These free working spaces allows people to develop their ideas and creations. They are free to use the resources provided in the space, including all the people around them who are working for the same goal.
This collaborative spirit is something Singapore needs to develop more. I look towards this in the future as a collaborative environment would be much more conducive as compared to a competitive one. However, all it is right now is a lofty dream that would take a whole new generation’s time to change.
Today marks the first day of company visits. The first company we visited was JJS which business is to connect music lovers through the use of technology and the host was called CJ Kim. She explained that the application mymusictaste allows fans to request for which idol that they wish to see and decide how much they are willing to spend. In this way, JJS is able to guarantee the demand for concert and artists and promoters can be sure that the concert will be profitable. As such, promoters and artist will be able to make a living and most importantly have satisfied fans. As of now, mymusictaste has already successful organised 50 concerts over 25 countries.
However, this success had humble beginnings as they had to work with less popular groups such as Lunafly and it took some time for people to recognize that this model is successful before committing. This proves one practical fact is that you need to first attain success before you can convince people that your idea works. I have also learnt that even as the product is important, it is essential to have a passionate team to run the business. Lastly, i have learnt how important is it to have an idea that cannot be replicate as huge companies would just steal your idea and since the legal system takes forever, most start-ups cannot match the competition and go out of business.
Next up, we visited 530 and thankfully, they are both located at the same area. 530 is currently waiting for the beta release for their application that is called ZimCar. The motivation for this application was that the CEO realized that the process of moving house is very troublesome and people normally have a hard time trying to find the right movers to do the job. Therefore, he decided that he would provide the whole moving package as a very affordable rate to entice the users and by simplifying the moving process. Despite not being a very innovative solution, i believed he identified an important problem and tackled the problem with an effective solution with the use of technology.
Day 1: JJS + FiveThirty
Five Thirty is a 3 year old startup that is focused on logistics, primarily targeting single families who are moving. They have a 3 tier company- Zimcar, Zimman, and Zimbox. Which covers the required manpower, boxes and vehicles to move belongings from point A to point B. Their plan is to disrupt an otherwise house moving logistics market by providing reliable service at a cheaper price, while making it as hassle less as possible.
From JJS I learnt that
- A charismatic CEO and persistence is important in finding the team you need for your startup - CJ only agreed to join the team because of how persistent her CEO was in convincing her and contacting her; he made her believed in her value that she would bring to not only the company but also to herself.
- you must recruit specialists and experts who really understand the market and user base that your startup project is aiming for. In the case of CJ, she was proactively sought after and hired due to her links with the many artists and important people in the music industry of Korea and the US.
From Five Thirty:
- Passion and belief in your life goals is important when doing your startup
- make sure that the people in your team are of a right mix
- Identify a pain that which many people would resonate it. The more painful it is, the more willing users would take up a solution the moment it is released.
