Jerene WONG Pei Ling Trip
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Day 1
All of us have been planning, preparing and really excited for this technopreneurship study mission. The start-up companies in South Korea and Tokyo have a lot to offer and we are looking forward to this enriching learning experience. After touching down at Incheon Airport, we made our way to our first destination, Twinword, located at G Square.
Twinword
This company has been around for around two years, founded by Kono. Kim. Basically, their business approach is to analyse big data collected and understand human computer interaction. The objective is to understand how people associate various words. For instance, key words such as student, chairs, board, people will associate to the theme school. The interesting thing is how they come up with such an algorithm to rank the various key words and associate it to things people tend to relate to.
Smart Content Center
This organisation is set up to support smart content-related companies of Korea with high potentials to become global entrepreneurs, funded by the government. In Korea, the government is very supportive of start-up companies. In comparison to the start-up scene in Singapore, in my opinion, there are a lot of restrictions and certain schemes would expect a certain percentage of equity which might discourage people to go ahead to go for it. Unlike in Korea, this Smart Content Center has an incubation program to provide free space and 50% of all the utility cost for a maximum duration of 2 years. In other words, it lightens the burden of start-up firms and help to collaborate with other related institution in the market.
Lasso
With the increasing trend in mobile market in Korea, the founder identified a gap from the browse product online to buy products offline stage. They simply produce web service to bridge the gap identified. I see a lot of potential in this market. Indeed, there is an increasing trend in mobile market and the e-commerce scene. As technology becomes more advanced, people have abandoned traditional way of doing things such as visiting a brick and mortar store to ask a sales person about a product.
As Twinword and Lasso are part of Smart Content Center, they are all located in the same building. Hence, they brought us around for an office tour. We got to see the 3D machines and understand how the models were made, which I find it pretty interesting. Knowing that 3D printing is one of the latest trends forecasted by Garter and did research on it a few months back, I finally get to see how it is being made and understand about it better. Visiting such start-up companies let me see a different perspective of companies in the aspects of company culture. We can say that it is very open to encourage people to give wild ideas openly.
KBS
KBS is a South Korean radio and television network that was founded in 1927.Our team was very privileged to have the opportunity to visit the various studios in KBS and understand certain standard protocols of doing things. I find it really amazing and tedious for the staff to prepare for a television broadcast. It is so much tougher as what we expected it to be.
Overall, the first day of our study mission has been amazing. I am looking forward to day 2 and beyond to explore on the start-up scenes in the respective two countries.
Day 2
On our second day, which is also Labour day, we visited one company hosted by Freda and Si Hui. Previously, we met the CEO and two interns in Singapore on briefing day, which gave us an overview of the service they provided.
Ideabove Inc. This start-up company came up with Listr.fm, a global social music network to provide an easy way to share and recommend with friends. As we all know, over the past century, technology is becoming more advanced and people no longer purchase CDs, they just want to download songs off the web. Apart from that, studies have found that people are most satisfied with music discovery when they got personal recommendations from friends. Furthermore, people always tend to use several platforms and sites to search for songs and/or videos, which posed as a problem faced by people in the market. With that being said, this is where Listr.fm stepped in to resolve this market problem. I find it an interesting concept. Over the past one year, I have been using a similar platform, Spotify. However, this platform is targeted at songs instead of videos. For Listr.fm, they are targeting at the Southeast Asia Market first, before moving on to Western countries. However, I pondered over how they going to reach out to such diverse markets with users of different cultures, needs and wants. However, out of my curiosity, I asked one of the team members to find out more about their business strategy in this aspect. As of now, they do not have any different strategies in reaching out to the two diverse markets.
From the company visits thus far, I have realised that the entrepeneurs are very passionate of what they are doing and willing to take the risk. Most importantly, they need to identify a problem in the market, be clear who they are targeting and develop strategies accordingly to reach out to them.
After our company visit, we went to Sicheon for shopping and tour around the area. We head over to Ewha Women's University. The landscape really caught my attention. After an afternoon of shopping, we went to watch Jump show. One word to describe the show-Awesome as it is hilarious and very entertaining. It is very different from the usual play I watched in Singapore.
Day 2
VCNC
Value Creators & Company (VCNC) came up with a mobile application, Between, which was presented to us. The basic idea is it wants to help couple keep track of memories. Between allows couples to have a private space in the mobile virtual world via one-to-one messaging services, photo-sharing and reminders of important dates such as their anniversary or valentine's day. Isn't it interesting. It is trying to expand globally from Korea to Japan to Taiwan. Till date, they have made an achievement by getting press coverage from various reputable online news such as Forbes, CNN, Economist. Simply, it is just so impressive.
Something I find it very interesting is that he mentioned the motivation or story behind the birth of this application. In Korea, people have the fear of being left out and women have the power to control a guy. I think it is very different to Singapore in this aspect. Hence, with this application, it aims to bring couples together and strengthen their bond in the relationship. However, as much as I like the idea of bringing couples together, I personally feel that relationship is a very emotional and sensitive issues matter, no one can predict if it will last. Hence, I think it is difficult to tackle sensitive relationship issues such as a break-up. As much as one wants to keep the memories, sometimes, it is better to let go and the party will want to delete the whole application and might not want to download the application again in future. Apart from that, they are targeting at a very niche market, focusing on just couples, what about those who are singles? Perhaps, they can have an application to match-make singles and help them transit to use between.
Memebox
The second last company we visited is Memebox. Till date, they have collaborated with 3000 bloggers to promote their products. Recently, they have launched their global website to make the purchase of their products to be shipped internationally. It has grown to sell 10 products daily to 40 products. Isn't it a huge jump? Talking about their products, I must say I am really impressed byhow they could easily come up with different types of boxes such as lucky box. It made me ponder over how they decide which products to put into the box. Apart from that, since it is made available to shoppers worldwide, how do they accommodate to the different markets such as asian vs. western where they have different skin tone and expectations. Hence, if they standardised the products to be sold to this market, isn't it tough to manage such diverse markets?
As I have worked in cosmetics retailer company previously, I learnt that marketing is the key to promote sales and reach out to your customers. At the present moment, they are working with influential people on youtube and bloggers. However,in my opinion, if they were to expand to reach out to Singapore market, they should look at other available social media platforms such as facebook and instagram. Simply, not everyone is active on youtube to watch make-up related videos. In addition, they are narrowing the ways in reaching out to potential customers.
Flitto
Last but not least, we have flitto, the last organisation we visited in Korea.We went for a tour around the office. I was really impressed by the surrounding with an open concept culture. I think such a culture will help to instill creativity which is beneficial for start-ups.
What is flitto all about? Basically, this organisation provides a mobile application platform for accurate, cost effective language translation. Till date, it has over +3m users over 170 countries. The basic functionalities of the application are social media, create fun and the flitto store. I think such as application bas a lot of potential especially when nowadays people need to travel abroad for business trips, sometimes, there is just language barrier and you need to translate something from one language toanother to help you understand. Most importantly, for flitto, they have a very interesting concept to entice people by giving points to users by translating. From the points earned, they can cash out, shop at flitto store or even donate the money. Isn't it cool?
Takeaways from Company Visits in Korea
Here are some key factors which I think are essential to set-up a business after visiting the various start-up organisations in Korea. 1. The need for a business model 2. Support from the government for start-up funding 3. Diverse Team 4. Passion and Motivation
The people in both countries, Singapore and Japan, they have a risk-adverse mindsets and I believe that this is partly attributed to our Asian collectivism. However, in my personal opinion, Singaporeans still tend to be worried in setting up business and will prefer to join a MNC over a start-up firm, just like Koreans. With that being said, it is why both countries government have been finding various ways to promote entrepreneurship to spark innovation, creativity that will drive the economies of the respective countries. However, in Singapore, they focus more on just giving capital to entrepreneurs who have the potential to set up their own business. Whereas, in Korea, as mentioned in the session by SCC, they have an incubator programme for a maximum of two years. Not only the government provides capital, they also provide space for the running of a business.
