Reflection

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.