1415T2g1 South Korea/Participant Information/Tan Jun Rong
Contents
About Jun Rong
SMU email: junrong.tan.2013@business.smu.edu.sg
Facebook: Add me!
LinkedIn: Jun Rong
Academic Year: 2
Degree: Pursuing Bachelor of Business Management
Interests: Kpop!, Harry Potter, Youtubing endlessly, playing games [not at all nowadays due to school :( ], browsing the web for interesting stuff and Samba music
Why TSM South Korea?
- What motivates you to join TSM?
6.30am: Alarm on Samsung Galaxy S4 rings, proceeds to activate the Snooze function in intervals of 5 minutes for 3 times
6.35am: Snooze alarm rings, proceeds to turn it off for another 5 minutes of rest
6.40am: Snooze alarm rings, proceeds to turn Snooze function off and grumpily accepts life
7.23am: Woke up again, searched for my mobile phone and looked at the time. Literally jumped out of bed after realizing that I had went back to sleep after turning the alarm off and overslept
7.25am: Proceeds to brush my teeth using the Oral B electric toothbrush and skipped the shower
7.30am: Out of house with bread in one hand, S4 in the other. Eating the bread while clicking my EasyTaxi app (an app which lets me book a taxi using GPS to locate where am I)
7.33am: Taxi uncle uses the face-to-face video call to check the exact location I am at
7.35am: Boarded the taxi, now checking my schedule for the day using the S Planner application, reading through school emails on the Samsung email app and catching up on lecture slides using Dropbox which synchronizes all my lecture slides and school work between my phone, my laptop and my personal computer at home. All the while trying to resist reading long messages from last night's Whatsapp groups and personal messages
8.07am: Reached SMU at last! After much fiasco, it is only the start of yet another long muggy day at SMU...
Does the above remind you of how your typical SMUgger day starts? As you can see, technology (from the small alarm app on your phone all the way to satellite dishes in space, communicating with the little device on your palm on where your location is) is embedded in my life as much as anyone of you. Thus, I believe the best way to start up a business of my own, is to embrace the art of how technology intertwines itself with our daily life, vice versa. Just imagine the bottom-line (as what the VCs always focus on) this kind of business will fetch, with the huge market of individuals whose life are already submerged with technology.
However, I know that everyone with basic business sense realizes how profitable technology businesses are too. And why is it that not everyone is jumping on the technological business bandwagon? As I have learnt in economic terms: Barriers to Entry. But what exactly are these barriers to entry? How do I know how much it takes to even produce a simple taxi-booking app like EasyTaxi? Do I need to learn coding? Gosh I have heard horror stories from my friends in IS about coding! Do I need to learn how to beautify the app using Photoshop or any other graphics editing software? Do I need to do anything to make sure that any amount of users can use my app at the same time? Do I need to take note of any bugs that might arise after users use my app, if so, how do I go about fixing all these bugs without interfering users who are currently using the app? What are the legal implications if I release a similar taxi-booking app but I name it GrabTaxi or Uber? What if I want to do something more high-tech than just apps? And what country would be the best and hopefully most forgiving if I plan to launch this business for the first time?
Thus that is my motivation to join this TSM. To put it simply, I want to
- Create my own technology-focused business
- Know what are the exact challenges and how to handle them
- Know where exactly to launch this business and why it is so
- Learn from the successful and the failures of technology-focused businesses before me
- Spread my appreciation of the fusion between technology and our lives
I believe any standard business study mission or any other study mission would not allow me to accomplish these 5 points. Thus TSM is the only way to go and I hope my motivations will be fully fulfilled thru this TSM.
- Why pick South Korea?
Internship Opportunities
- What types of internship opportunities interest you?
- Any ideal firms (based in South Korea) that you wishes to join?
Starting a business
- What types of business interest you?
- What plan do you have in starting a business?
Past Experiences
- Describe your past experience (entrepreneurship, or works in start ups etc)
