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?
Business that are creative in their products and/or processes. I feel that it is meaningless to chase after the bottom-line without having any significant impact to the society. Thus I would prefer business which can impact lives positively and can continue to give back through monetary contributions, volunteering efforts or creating products that benefit certain aspects of human life.
- What plan do you have in starting a business?
My plan is to have a general technology business that aims to make life better in any way possible.
Thinking from a student's point of view, one of the idea I have is to tackle the seat-hogging problem in the SMU library. My pitch will go something like this:
Have you ever walked into the SMU library and kept on walking for a good 15mins before you find a seat or just give up and go home to study?
Have you ever been to a carpark where there are overhead lights that indicate from afar whether a particular parking slot has been occupied by a car?
If your answer to both of the questions are yes, then I have the perfect solution for u.
Transferring the technology we have in these overhead light sensor systems, we can have a system that can be installed to the top of every seat in the library. This system will have a heat sensor which detects the body heat of a person who is occupying the seat. The lights will then flash red, signaling from afar that the seat is occupied.
Once the person leaves the seat, the lights will remain red for an adjustable timing (lets set in as 15 minutes in this case). After 15 mins, the light will turn green, signaling to seat-finders like you and me that the seat is empty and can be occupied! This will then refrain seat-hoggers from hogging the seat for more than 15mins.
What this means for you as SMU student is that
1. It saves you time from finding seats in the library
2. It prevents other students from hogging the seats
What this means for u as a potential business partner of mine is that
1. There is a huge market potential for this system.
Figures presented below are rough estimates
| Library | Number of seats |
| SMU | 1500 |
| NTU (8 libraries) | 8 X 1000 |
| NTU (7 libraries) | 7 X 1000 |
and not forgetting our 24 public libraries.
I do recognize that the above idea is a little too far-fetched as of now, but the technology involved (heat sensor and lights) is not an implausible one as it is used very much today. However, this example can showcase the direction of where I want to aim my business towards, which is to get technology to add value to people's lives. If I can tackle everyday problems, however minor it is, using technology, then I will find a way to do it, given the constraints of how advanced our technology is, prices etc.
Past Experiences
- Describe your past experience (entrepreneurship, or works in start ups etc)
