Reflection
Contents
Day 1
We started the first day of our TSM trip super early; reaching the airport at around 7am after an entire night of flight. Despite the lack of sleep, all of us still managed to remain hyped up for our first company(even though 80% of the class KO-ed on the bus ride to the company).
Twinword
The first company that we visited for this entire trip is Twinword, a company that collects information on how people associate certain words to a certain concept. With the technology they are employing, they are able to link words that are used in similar context together, selling the list to search engines to improve their search functionalities as well as refine the targeted marketing algorithm. The first 30000 users will be able to access this service free of charge while the company has to pay 0.01 cents for each subsequent user.
Twinword is a super interesting company as it not only have websites which allows users to practice their English under different academic categories; they also provide APIs to allow companies to use their services, effectively capturing the business to business and business to consumer market.
Despite being very strong in their business to business aspects with them supporting multiple search engines, I personally feel that Twinword can focus more on the business to consumer portion, expanding their market share by collaborating with the local Junior High and High School. This can be done by marketing their application as the number 1 app that will allow students to improve the English vocabulary rapidly. As the world is getting more globalized, it is highly important that every individual knows how to speak English, and parents as well as schools will be willing to pay for the service if it is proven to be helpful.
Lasso
South Korea is one of the most technologically advanced country in the world, and they currently hold the first place for having the fastest Internet speed. With such convenient technologies, it also created a booming mobile shopping scene where users will purchase items using the mobile phone.
The CEO of Lasso recognizes this phenomenon and tied it together with mobile phone whose prices always fluctuate to create an application that will report the newest prices of handphones if there is a drop in prices. This ensures that people will always be able to get the lowest price phones at that point in time when they are considering to make a purchase. Furthermore, this saves people the hassle of having to look through multiple websites personally.
This is an idea that I really like since I always face the problem of fluctuating prices when shopping on Gmarket; I will have to check all the prices of the items I've added to cart the previous day to ensure that no discount has happened overnight. Therefore, if this kind of application exists in the shopping industry, it will undoubtedly help consumers save money which might generate more revenue eventually as consumers will be tempted to buy more with the low price. Therefore, I think that Lasso can possibly expand their scope and includes other forms of items in their services, effectively targeting a bigger market that will definitely earn them more users.
Smart Content Center(SCC)
Unlike the previous two companies, SCC is an incubator set up by the South Korean government and ran by officials who are highly experienced in the technological field to provide startups with the space and resources that they need to get a head start in their business. Each startup will be granted a two year grace period in the acceleration project before they have to leave the building and support themselves in every aspect.
SCC is currently putting majority of their effort on helping the startups get a foothold of the global market, leaving little to be desired for the local market. Locally, events and talks are the only means that SCC is employing to promote an application. While most people will think that it is good to have a global outreach in their early stages, I beg to differ. In South Korea, it is a society where the economy is largely dominated by huge conglomerates or better known as chaebol. In this kind of situation, there is a high turnover rate for startups as they are simply unable to survive the first few years of competition. Therefore, I will think that instead of trying to push all the startups globally right from the start, it might be a better idea coaching them on the different methods to make a dent in the local market to ensure that they will be able to survive on their own and penetrate the local market even after they are left to their own devices.
Korea Broadcasting System(KBS)
KBS is one of the company that I was really excited to visit since I've watched a lot of their shows, and it will be interesting to see some of the magic behind it. Being able to recognize some of the places due to excessive tv watching is pretty amazing, especially when you realize how tedious it is for the employees to put together a show.
It is slightly regrettable that we aren't able to join a recording as an audience however, getting to see the sets is pretty fun. Also, due to Sewol shows have not been airing for close to a month, and for a long time, I genuinely thought that everyone will just be idling in their offices doing close to nothing, so it is good to see how show recordings actually goes on, and the employees livelihood are not affected simply by the fact that they work in the entertainment industry.
Day 2
Idea Above
After a good night of rest and fried chicken, we embarked on Day 2 journey. Day 2 happens to coincide with Labor Day, therefore a lot of companies in Korea are not open. However, Idea Above is super nice and accommodating and agreed to host us. Idea Above is housed in an incubator in Songdo, located very near the well-known gaming company NCSoft.
In Songdo, companies will be able to get benefits in terms of taxes and operations, which is why a lot of the technological firms are located there.
Listr.fm is one of the most intriguing companies for me out of all the companies we have visited in the past two days. Music is something that we interact with daily, and we are used to hearing big names in the social music commerce such as Sound Cloud and Spotify. Listr.fm shares a similar idea with those applications with an innovative add-on of their own.
Listr.fm is a social networking playlist owned by Idea Above which aims to provide an easy way to recommend music among friends. The application works in such a way where you can create playlists for all the different occasions, and both friends and strangers will be able to recommend suitable songs for that particular occasion. It has been proven that users find it most satisfying when their friends introduce new songs to them instead of users having to do online research themselves, therefore increasing the value of this application. This application is mainly targeted at couples, friends, and fan clubs as they are the ones who are most likely to have an interest in creating a collaborative playlist.
As someone who uses youtuberepeat.com on a daily basis, Listr.fm is a very refreshing idea as it provides more ways to improve the existing functionalities of Youtube. Also, it is highly reminiscent of 8tracks, where people will create their playlist and share it but with the added incentives of being able to watch a video.
The most interesting part of Listr.fm will be the ability to add music to another person's playlist. This might be slightly irritating as they are bound to be people who will purposely troll and terrorize other people's playlist. However, if everyone decides to use it in a very 'good' way, it will be an amazing platform where people will be able to find music that are catered to their tastes and even expand their horizon.
Day 3
VCNC
I personally have a lot of affection towards VCNC not only because it is a company that I am in charge of, but also because of how I've always wanted to use their app. I first chanced upon Between a year ago, but there is no opportunity to use it till Rachel comes along and saved me by being my partner.
Between was first conceptualized due to the social media fatigue that Jake was facing where everything is too publicized and there seems to be a lack of private platform for people in general. This social media fatigue along with the privacy issues that most people are facing becomes the initial reason for the creation of Between.
Right now, Between is the largest couple app in Korea with a lot of coverage from media all over the world as well as having KPOP group Block B sing about them in one of their songs. The reason why Between was able to grow so quickly is due to their virtual ring concept, where it gives couples a sense of belonging to each other. Also, couples in general are afraid of looking less affectionate than another couple, therefore making more people pick the app up immediately when they get attached.
Between plays on the emotional factor of people, making them use and stay with the application. While it is a good idea, as mentioned by some of our friends, it can turn out to be pretty hazardous after a bad break up since all the past memories is actually stored and created using the app. This might turn some people off, not wanting to go back to the application after the relationship fails, however, as mentioned, due to the fear of losing out to other couples, people actually come back and use the app eventually,
Due to the differences in culture, the Eastern and Western market is largely different. The Western market requires pragmatic functionalities in order for an application to create a dent and generate tons of user base. VCNC has decided to focus on building a solid base for their company, honing what they currently have to perfection before building up on new functionalities to penetrate the Western market which is a good choice.
VCNC has a very interesting set of rules that they try to keep to since they are a company that is growing really rapidly to ensure that they have a healthy company culture and this is a really good idea since it is always better to lay down some ground rules rather than run into difficulties in the future.
Like most startups, VCNC actually went through two failures before everything took off with Between. It is amazing and inspiring how the founders refused to give up and continued striving for their dreams with the ideas that they have.
Memebox
Memebox is another company located in Gangnam. It is a company that is set up by the males who sees a market for beauty boxes, not because they are interested in beauty products.
Memebox works in such a way where they allow users to subscribe to them and they will send them a beauty box. However, it is not a monthly subscription so users actually have to continuously subscribe every month to receive the boxes. This can be slightly annoying as it is pretty troublesome to repeat the same procedure every month, however, this doesn't tie any users down to a package which they might not need in the long run.
For me, this is a brilliant sales strategy. While selling items in packages and making them cheaper might attract more buyers, it also unintentionally creates the burden of having to pay a lump sum at once, or having to continue getting the products when you are broke for that month. Therefore, with this current business model, Memebox can ensure that the users are actually comfortable with their purchases and there isn't any pressure on the other party which might make people come back to them even more often.
Memebox gets their products from the different skin care and make up companies for free in exchange to doing promotions for them through their beauty boxes. Technically, there are a company operating on no expenses sans salary, rent and other miscellaneous fees, making it easy for them to gain tons of revenues when the business fully take off.
Right now, they are producing boxes below the demand margin. This not only proves their popularity, but it will also make other non-users curious about what is so good about the boxes. Producing below the demand margin will ensure that they will not have stocks and doesn't have to worry about products being unsold, it is also highly inconvenient on the users part as they will have to "snatch" for the boxes before it get sold out. This can be highly stressful for them, deterring future uses.
Therefore, I will think that it might be better for them to project their growth and amount of sales for the boxes every month, supplying more products when the demand call for it. If by any chance there are excess boxes, Memebox can simply slot the make up or skin care products into the subsequent months boxes since they doesn't expire that easily when it is not used. With this comes the concern of the products not being in season or being unpopular after a certain period of time. On the other hand, Memebox has multiple boxes other than the regular one, so they can put it in a box that fits the theme of the product or push it out as a separate box, eradicating problems that might come with the constant lack of stock. Things that are hard to get are attractive at first, but after a while, people might just lose interest in it.
Flitto
Flitto is located in Maru180, a super nice building that puts the SMU incubator lab to shame. Flitto is under the acceleration programme by Hyundai which is highly intriguing as a conglomerate is actually supporting startups that might pose a threat to them in the future.
Flitto works on crowd sourcing translations for the different languages and it first took off when the founder translates all the tweets of KPOP artists and tweets it to the artists to gain attention. It is a highly successful tactic as they managed to garner lots of user base as well as get collaboration with JYP. JYP is currently one of their stakeholders, and their artists will actually record things that are only accessible through Flitto expanding the user base. The publicity from the artists is good, however, it also creates a situation where they are stereotyped to be a KPOP tweet translation service.
Flitto has joined numerous competitions in the past two years, and emerged as champions in a lot of them. Starting from this year, they are going to focus on improving their application instead of getting their name out there by joining competitions.
Simon, Flitto's CEO strives on being honest with most of his stuff which I think is a highly important and yet often missing quality for anyone interested in doing a business. Only when the CEO is honest about his products and the way he do things will users be able to gain confidence of the product and use it without worries. This is also something close to my heart as my motto in life is "Living life honestly", therefore, when I heard about how he believes in being completely transparent with his products, I gained newfound respect for him.
From the short interaction, it is obvious that Flitto has a very fun and engaging company culture where everyone is comfortable with each other and not afraid to speak what is on their mind(seeing how the CEO and global PR liaison can actually disrupt each other speeches). This is a stark difference from some of the startups that I have seen in Singapore with the CEO putting his co-founder down just because of differences in ideas.
Overall Takeaway from Korean companies
In the three days of company visits, I've seen multiple admirable individuals who doesn't give up even when they fail for the first time. Instead, they get back on their feet and work even harder to share their ideas with the rest of the world. I feel the passion especially strongly from Ian since the main reason he wants to create Listr.fm is because he loves music and wants to share it with the rest of the world and he doesn't let the current Korean laws hinder him and decides to target a global market instead of focusing on Korea.
During this trip, I've also experienced the difference between big corporations and startups first hand. For all the incubator that we visit, we can walk into the offices without having to get permission at every level and even peer in to see what other companies that we are not visiting are doing. On the other hand, there are multiple security checks in every gantry, level of KBS where the KBS personnel has to check if it is possible for us to visit that area.
If I were to describe a startup, I will see it as the sea where everything can flow freely without hindrance. And even if it looks calm and harmless on the top, you don't know what lies below, and there might be so much potential in it that the other companies will get threatened by them before tney know it.
