LEE Jin
Reflection
Blog/Journal
Pre-trip BnBHero- This is one of the company that we intended to visit while we are in Korea. Fortunately the Korean startup co-founder/ marketing director, Mr Park Yong Soo, is based in Singapore for their south east asia market expansion . We managed to schedule an interview in Singapore with him at the Starbucks cafe and learnt many important lessons through our conversation.
Here are some of the questions that we have asked him:
1.Why did you start a business?
2.Is there any point in time that your team almost failed?
3.Is there a company culture in BNBhero?
4.In an expansion plan, how will BNBhero compete against up and coming businesses?
5.What are some of the challenges setting up a start up in this industry?
6.What are some of the future expansion plans for BNBHero?
7.Any tips for entrepreneurs wannabes?
8.If there is 1 thing that you are most proud of in BnBHero/ as an entrepreneur, what will it be?
9. Future expansion plans.
And through the interview, we have gain a few main pointers.
1. It is never too late to start your own business
2. At the end of the day, it might be a lot more worthwhile creating your own company than to work for a MNC all your life
3. understand your strength and weaknesses very thoroughly before market entry.
4. good team composition is the most important factor for success in technology startups.
Apart from this, we believe that BnBHero will be a successful company if they were to succeed in their collaboration with their China and France partners.
We are also happy that BnBHero has considered our suggestions given to them during our presentation.
We wish them all the best!
Day 1 Today we visited SCC and Twinword’s company It is pretty impressive that Korea has a Smart Content Centre that cultivates entrepreneurs with businesses that deals with knowledge-based management. It show alot about how much the Korean government is emphasizing the usage of smart content in their development of the IT scene in Korea. Twinword is a company that utilizes machine learning and natural language processing. With the 3 different types of revenue generating model, Twinword is all set to reap its reward from the tedious work process of collecting data from its users. However, after asking the CEO about his business’ profitability, he did mention that the business is competitive but he thinks that it will definitely be better in the near future.
We also have a bonus presentation by Lasso on the crossover shopping that is a new emerging trend in Korea s well as in China. There seems to be a gap in the market information on specific products for example, I phones have different price across different retailers and companies like Lasso will be able to bridge the information gap by informing their customers on the best deals out in the market.
Lessons learnt from the company visit to SCC and Twinword:
we should look out for such agencies for us do startups in Singapore.At the same time, with the flexibility of a being a technology company that can be situated anywhere in the world, we may want to consider sourcing for funding or support based in neighboring countries like Korea.
Day 2 Today we visited IdeaAbove and My Real Trip’s office. It is a very good trip for us to learn more about our country and the reason why many Korean startup companies are heading towards Singapore to expand into the South East Asian market. Ian, Listr.FM’s CEO explained many of his concept to us about how his startup defies conventional revenue generating venture capitalist’s ideal business model and move into a consumer interest first product. I believe that we are very fortunate to be born in an environment with all the necessary support that can be given to us when we need it. I am looking forward to tomorrow’s presentation and company visits
Day 3 VCNC(Between), Memebox and Flitto VCNC Analogy – symbolic text between tries to utilize fear of missing out and to know if you are committed to your partner. Between has many features that are customized for couples to use, organize and record their significant events. For example, some includes: Share calendar, store couple photos but the best of all will be the privacy setting that allow couples to keep all memories within themselves. We also noted that they have a record 7.2 million downloads with about 42 million messages sent and 400k photos shared per day. VCNC’s Business model depends on freemium, advertising and commerce. They are currently trying to penetrate into the western market. Everyone in a startup counts and that we should value their opinions. A company will grow as the employee grows. Their company culture that is very inclusive and supportive of the co-workers in VCNC. – For example, they have a thanks CEO its Monday day. Memebox We had a memorable trip to Memebox’s office and at the same time managed to value add the company by providing useful feedbacks like trying out store front distribution channel. Wonshin brought us around. She is a very enthusiastic marketing director and we have learnt a lot of insights from her experience with Lo real and memebox. While showing us how Memebox functions as an e-commerce website, we happen to find out that Memebox does their marketing by sending products to Youtube stars that are considered B/C grade and that have an outreach that is between 10000-30000.
End message and learning point: Good product is easiest to do marketing
Flitto A company that wants to do Selling beyond google translation The translation business is a 10 billion dollars market and 1 major advantage is that Flitto does not depend on machine translation. Their business model consist of 3 different revenue sources – matching fee, transaction fee and translation database sharing. – 300K translation a day The co-founder, Simon has interest in language and hence created an applicant right from the start to assist many pepople in their major problem of translating. Difficulties and challenges – what comes first, content to attract people or translators ready to translate the content? crowdsourcing sounds good, but how are you going to get the users. These are some issues that they face right at the start when Fillto was still starting out. Overall, Flitto gives a very inspiration speech of putting ourselves outside the comfort zone( traditional Samsung path) and create a business from a good idea.
Lesson learnt:
VCNC: create your own market and gain market share fast
Memebox: Advertising and flexibility
Flitto:
1.Talk to as many people as possible about our idea and lets say if it is 100 comments received, even if we receive 80 similar comments, 20 other comments will be different and might be useful
2. don't just start a company for the sake of starting a company
3. don't lie, even if it is something small.
Japan companies
1. Smart education (create apps for children between the age bracket of 0-2,3-6)
Smart Education was founded with a strong will to “create a new market that will impact the society”. Many of us learn after growing up that life can be a lot of fun or less enjoyable, according to the ways you perceive and approach things. Following this example, Smart education thought that making kids start to think and take action for themselves from childhood can help open a lot of doors for them in life. This motivated them to start a business strictly focusing on “intellectual education for infants and young children”.They provide opportunities to think through playing and having fun will directly enhance kid’s ability to learn and think for themselves. They aim to allow kids to enjoy learning and interact with others, especially with parents. They also want to help kids discover what they are really interested in and stimulate their imagination that will, in the long run, offer them maximum possibilities. We will keep on challenging ourselves to serve and help kids with propose novel ways of learning.
Suggestions provided to them:
a. In order to break into the US market, they can try to create applications that focuses on stress relieving techniques( breath in and out in a slow motion) to help reduce stress among kids and to teach them these techniques to allow them to form a habit of relieving stress.
b.Introduce harder subjects like Shakespeare's literature in a fun and interactive manner for the age bracket of 3-6
Lesson learnt:
a. stakeholders of product are really important for us to take note when pitching the product.(especially the parents in this case)
b. a successful product in Japan does not mean a successful product in the US market
2. Cybernoid CEO of this company spent 5 years brainstorming good ideas to be implemented and also to build connections that can assist him in his start up. Created the Live 2D application that allows animators to bring their 2D character into the 3D model. He knows that he himself is a programmer and not really a manager kind of person and because of that, he used more time to work on his weaknesses like networking to ensure his success in his idea.
Lesson learnt:
a.Take your time to build on ideas
b. think far ahead like 100 years in advance, what will you be using, what will you be wanting and how do you bridge the gap.
c. once the idea is formed, choose the one that allows you to utilize the most out of all your resources.
3. Hachimenroppi
This company is one of my favorite and most insightful company visit out of all the Japanese companies. First of all, This company acts as a platform that revolutionize conventional businesses using digital technologies. Distribution of fresh fishes to restaurants in Japan is a very old and traditional business that has existed in Japan for a very long period of time. Hachimenroppi provides a real time platform that connects the catch of the day with the restaurants and other fish suppliers. Through their service, Hachimenroppi takes a cut from the transaction. Hachimenroppi's success can be understood through various outstanding factors : 1.first in the market to utilise the concept of "Amazon" for the fish industry 2.with the volatile and fluctuating supply of fishes, a platform that provides understanding to the buyers can save cost and time in information gathering. 3.background knowledge of co-founder that has business knowledge through 2 start up failures and banking knowledge from previous banking job.
Lesson learnt: a.it is important for business to focus on these 3 interlinking aspects : client,People and money. All these factors are interlinked by a common value which is marketing.
b.Always focus on the client first. Hachimenroppi priorities their clients as the most important aspect among the 3 factors.
c.the difference between products' prices can be differentiated through the service provided in between. Thus if a good service can value add the client, prices will never be a problem.
d. don't waste money and don't waste time.
4. Freakout Freakout is a digital marketing technology company that created the first Demand Side Platform (DSP) in Japan. Their platform enables marketers and advertisers to buy real-time impressions across the leading display Ad Exchanges and Supply Side Platforms (SSPs). They are equipped with advanced technologies such as machine-learning bidding/optimization algorithms, look-a-like modeling, post-view attribution analysis, and private exchange solution, marketers and agency professionals for direct response,branding and full-funnel marketing.
Huge company with a very interesting CEO. Their CEO emphasizes a lot on the welfare and people management. It has the modernized flat and flexible corporate structure in their office. It can be observed through their shelves of snacks, swimming pool designed common area and different themed office rooms for each departments. Employees have get together sessions once every 3 months and a large hall for their own recreation activities.
Their CEO has previously sold his company to Yahoo and gained alot of revenue from that business acquisition and venture capitalist job after that. With his strong capital, he is able to quickly build his company up to compete in the real time bidding industry.
Lesson learnt: a. Important to work on serendipity. The ability to come up with an idea from other sources.
b. Work professionally in as many fields as possible.
5. United
not really useful in terms of lesson learnt. apart from never give up.
6. Trip Piece Trip piece is a company founded in Tokyo, Japan, in 2011. It is a community of travellers looking for likeminded people for the next adventure. They provide the web service for travellers to plan your trips and explore new places with new friends(AKA "social travelling"). Trips featured on trippiece are crafted by travellers, for travellers. Trippiece allows user to have a say in where to visit, what YOU’d like to see and do. Up till date, we were told that they have planned many external trips as well as internal trip.
The CEO is a passionate traveller who wants to bring joy to his users. He started this company with the aim in mind that he will be able to fulfill many of our dreams when it comes to travelling. Being able to connect like minded people together to travel to places that they always yearn.
Lesson learnt:
a. never give up.
b. build on the easier target audience/user/customer to gain the traffic flow. then increase the products to retain the customers.
c. focus on Marketing
7. Wantedly Wantedly is a Tokyo-based startup that uses the web to make work the most exciting it’s ever been. To make that happen, they have created a platform where people and companies meet based on passion and values, rather than money or benefits. As the job is what takes up the majority of your day. they want their users/customers to be excited about the actual work and the team that they might be working within the future, rather than what they get in return.
Lesson learnt:
a. human centralism. focus on human factors
b.Speed wins perfections. Try to work out on the speed aspect( especially bringing the idea to life)
c. teams should always have talents that can value add the team itself.
d. think and act minimal
e. good to understand and maximize social impact.
f. always find a good business pivot ( changing the business angle and be flexible)
g. a great team accelerates the growth of the company
h. Apply company vision into everything
i. find employees that share the same value
j. just build
