Li Jiacheng Nicholas
Reflection Time!
“Some nights are made for torture, or reflection, or the savoring of loneliness.” ― Poppy Z. Brite
Pre- Trip
Week 1 - The start of TSM!
The whole atmosphere was all fun and play,
I wondered if I was in the right class to stay.
Prof Ben gave an introduction of the course,
equipping us technopreneurs before we went out full force!
I'm Nicholas the video-maker,
a colossal task for this new editor.
Learning and doing my best,
life will take care of the rest.
And so begins the search for startups under the sun,
we all wish we had a company that's interesting and fun.
My eyes were fixated on Tokyo Otaku Mode,
anime, manga, cosplay and the wonderful childhood memories that we strode!
A short poem by Nicholas.
Week 2 - Seniors sharing + Trip planning
What a surprise we had today!
The seniors returned with many tips to say.
Interning in Korea seems like a dream vacation,
if only I didn't have a local internship obligation!
The itinerary team had wonderful suggestions,
I was pretty lost as I'm new to these locations.
Beer and chicken sounds yummy and delicious,
at least that's what Prof Ben always pitches! HAHA
Everyone is working hard to settle administration documents,
keeping things up-to-date and relevant.
Really looking forward to immersing in a new culture,
3 more months to our departure!
A short poem by Nicholas.
Week 6 - Mid-terms Bonding
How ye mates, it's been a while!
Lunch at Crossings cafe, with a Christian style.
Good to know that many had good progress,
whereas me and Ele are abit in distress. T.T
Tokyo Otaku Mode had space constraints,
tech startups tend to have small offices - no complaints.
Jeremy came to our rescue with the help of Wantedly,
it was reassuring to know, really!
Our new-found joys - Hachimen Roppi and Freakout,
Can't wait to tell the class what they are about!
And so we march on TSM warriors,
for now lets tackle mid-terms and be victorious!
A short poem by Nicholas.
Week 12 - Presentation
Today was an enriching day,
hearing what the different teams have to say
Lee Jin and Yun Xi were quite suay,
with the founder of BNBHero making sure they were okay!
After days of reading on Japan,
the Otakuboys spoke whatever they can.
Japan is all about family,
waiting for everyone to pang gang together, even if it means to dilly-dally...
Our companies were interesting, needless to say.
Relevant to each of us, in our own way!
In short, Hachimen Roppi improves fresh fish consumption. (Nicholas loves Fish, meow!),
Freakout deals with digital marketing revolution (Eleazar loves Sqkii, squeak!).
A short poem by Nicholas.
During Trip
Day 1 - Welcome to Korea!
Hi everyone! We have touched down safely in Korea and the mood was filled with excitement and anticipation for our companies visit, despite the jet lag that most are having.
Firstly, we went to the SMART CONTENT CENTER located at:
G-square 18~19F Hogae-dong, Dongan-gu, Anyang-city, Gyeonggi-do 431-080,
Korea for our company visit of Twinword and SCC.
Mr Kono Kim, from Twinword, was the first speaker of the day!
He was very fluent in English and was able to engage us immediately, telling us about how Twinword works (through a very secretive algorithm, which of course wouldn’t make sense for him to divulge :) ), how words association was created with different words having varying rankings based on customer’s feedbacks (through games, study materials etc). Mr Kim left inspiring words for all of us, mentioning that how this startup came about was because he discovered a problem: while working as a text miner and managing dataebases, he realised how little value has been taken out of word associations and how database search could be optimized if only people knew the correct words(highly-related words) to search.
Tips he left for us: As an entrepreneur, you will face several setbacks but you must be always positive about it and overcome it. Find a real problem happening in the world and work towards making it better!
Next up, we have the guys from SCC tell us more about them. They are a branch of the government that focuses on incubating companies that deals with smart contents. Why smart contents only? Because Korea is very advanced in the fields of telecommunication, electronics and information technology and thus they wish to leverage on that by helping local startups through some strategies like globalization support, production support, conferences and content test-bedroom.
Finally, we have a surprise visit from Baekho Lim, CEO and founder of Lasso&Company (http://www.lassocompany.com/), to present his works to us. Lasso’s product Fanada helps users to check live feeds from their favourite KPOP stars, with means of translations of what they say to other languages for all the KPOP aficionados around the world! Mr Lim pointed out several trends that was important: Ecommerce industry is worth $12 billion(USD) in Korea and is thus a huge market to look into. He also did valuable industry researches like discovering that people love using mobile phones for location-based services (like musuem sites, galleries and events) whereas for online shopping, people still love to do it online on their laptops or desktops (because the screen is bigger)!
Post Trip
poems coming your way...
