LOH Yi Song
Reflection
Blog/Journal
Day 1 – SCC ,Twinword, KBS
My group takes the first company for TSM 2014! It’s an interesting day as Mr Kim from Twinword happens to be as fun and friendly online. Over the period of Twinword’s presentation, it was interesting to get insights from their business model. I have understood whey they went freemium. It was because they felt that users should be able to try their APIs and at the same time allow then to process and collect new human knowledge.
On to SCC, they provided interesting insights on how the Korean government supports IT and telecommunications/ startups. It is a delight to hear that the government does not take any equity from new startups incubated.
Last but not least, KBS was a really fun tour to see how they film live shows. Fortunately, I managed to catch a comedian Jang Juri! She looks much better in person!
Day 2 - Ideas Above
This is one of my favourites so far as the founders of the company are of our age. This shows the potential youths have and set this as a good example. They are currently thinking of expanding into the global market namely – Philippines are majority of their users come from there. They found the gap in market where users these days find it hard to discover new music. What’s interesting is that users find music really good and pleasing is only when friends recommend them as compared to strangers. Therefore this gap helped them to start their app – Listr. Last but not least they have decided to relocate to Singapore due to better government support for startups.
Day 3 – MemeBox, Flitto, VCNC - Between
MemeBox
The domestic market is a really big and competitive market. But memebox never fails to surprise me on how they managed to break into it and be the leading cosmetic in a box concept. What really sets them different from their competitors is the size of the product, which is really huge and their products a Korean. So far no companies except have done this using korean products. They have also shared with us about how they marketed out their brand. they have did an analysis between using paid advertising on Facebook and using the public and they have gained more conversions via the public - Youtubers and bloggers. Last but not least, the challenges they have faced was actually getting into the global market due to the language barrier at first and they are looking forward to expand to Singapore.
Flitto
What I like about Flitto, is that it serves as a brand new niche market in the translation market. How it market itself out to the market. However, they should try to push their app out to overtake the translation market.Surprising enough, the replies by the public is extremely fast as compared to Google. They have also embedded a gamification element where the public can earn points to cash out for $$. Their crowdsourcing model has so far proven to be extremely successful. Translators also have to go through a series a test before they can be considered a trusted source of translation. Flitto began by providing translation services on Twitter for celebrities and this helped them to be recognised on the Korean market. Therefore, the CEO saw this gap which can be bridged by allowing public to help translate via incentivisation. Currently, their biggest profits comes from translation data collected to sell to translation machines. This creates a good win-win situation for them.
VCNC
This company has successfully broken in the conversational market. How they did it was sending the right message to the public that it gives a personal space for couples to converse." Whatsapp and other apps is like a crowded space, where Between is like a candlelight dinner." This makes perfect sense why people are converting to Between. Between has currently become a culture for the Koreans as those not using "Between" will feel left out. Some of the challenges they faced was actually targeting the Western market as they already have a dominant messenging app as compared to Korea. Furthermore, the culture of dating is different and may face resistance. Unlike the other mesenging apps competing to be the dominating one, "Between" serves as an additional platform instead of a competing platform for other messenging service which is why getting users wasn't a chore or it being a challenge to them. As for their organisational culture, it provides a very flat platform where employees can easily converse with each other without worries and feel at ease and happy at what they do. They all all obsess with their roles and tend to go above and beyond due to this organisational culture. This is something that I could learn to apply to future business in Singapore.
