1415T2g1 South Korea/Reflection/day5
South Korea
| Day 2 |
Contents
Day 5: Reflections
In Auctionary , I have learnt that even though an idea fails to fulfil the market, we should pivot to similar ideas in order to solve a problem that is relevant to the market. We should also focus on solving a specific problem even though it is a small market rather than casting a big net trying to appease everyone. It is better to dominate in that small market before moving on and expanding. The founder also has shared that we should not go full time on the project initially and we should do it little by little because we needed to support ourselves during the journey. The founder also shared that he used a variety of marketing platforms such as Google Adwords(50%) and LinkedIn(15%) to increase the awareness of his product in order to catch the attention of the global market. In Korbit, I learnt about the benefits of having Bitcoin as a currency with the use of Smart Contracts that promises a certain amount of Bitcoins to someone when the contract is fulfilled. It is more efficient as compared to regular transactions via cheque or other payment methods as those Bitcoins are automatically transferred to the receiver. It is also more secure to use BitCoins for online payment as you do not need to expose any credit card information that could expose yourself to online theft. I have also learnt that the reason why Bitcoin fluctuates is because it is an independent monetary policy and it is required to be an open financial market which would make exchange rate stability impossible.
The journey in South Korea has been great and enriching. After listening to many people, I realize that it is not easy to start a company. However, I am even more driven right now to start my own company and will continue to refine my own idea. I will take the approach at which I will take a normal office work and prepare for my own company on my free time. This approach will allow me to learn from others and build my idea at the same time.
- During our trip to Seoul TOPIS, I was really blown away by Seoul’s seamlessly integrated and highly efficient information, payment and monitoring systems for Seoul’s transport system which has far surpassed Singapore’s standard In addition, their systems have been operational since 2005 which seems unbelievable due to the advanced degree of integration between the different systems. I believe that there are 3 reasons for this:
- In the past, the Seoul government used to implement public policies without gathering sufficient public approval and support first, which is the similar to what the Singapore government is doing now. However, they realized that such a way was not effective at all and they have since adopted a human-oriented philosophy that puts their citizens’ welfare first with regards to public policy implementation. This is demonstrated in their citizen satisfaction metric index, which is a metric that is rarely used in deciding public policy in many countries.
- The Seoul government has tight control over the privatized companies that manage Seoul’s various transport companies. Rather than fining a company when they manage their allocated transport infrastructure badly like what Singapore is doing now, the Seoul government has the choice of ‘eliminating’ such a company appointing a more efficient company to take over.
- Korea has a rich supply of top Korean technology and engineering graduates that have had experience in top universities or technological hubs, which have definitely contributed to their highly advanced transport infrastructure such as running complex traffic simulation scenarios and utilizing top-of-the-edge GPS equipment.
- Mr Ron Yang, the CEO of auctionory, really impressed me with his honesty with regards to the failures in his startup journey. Despite his failure with version one of his translation platform and the departure of 2 developers, he remains so passionate and confident as ever with regards to his vision to transform the way translation is done today. He said that the ‘big bang approach’ of launching a fully completed product is not effective anymore as it incurs highly risk and cost of failure. Instead, he proposed us to adopt a lean startup methodology via agile development and speedy deployment of a minimum viable product. In addition, he said that it is crucial for a startup to focus on a small market and dominate it.
- For Korbit, I learnt that Bitcoin is a radically new method of re-defining the definition of a currency. Even though it is a highly technical product, Bitcoin has a place among the general public, similar to how normal users are able to surf the internet without needing to know about the HTTP and TCP/IP protocols. As I have heard of many negative stories related to Bitcoin, I am still undecided on whether Bitcoin will achieve widespread use as a currency in the near future.
Today, we visited Seoul Topis, Auctionory and Korbit.
The trip to Seoul Topis was an eye-opener given the immense technology behind the running of the traffic management system of Seoul. However, I felt that my insights from Auctionory and Korbit were much more significant. The CEO of Auctionory, Ronald Yang, started the company as a community driven translation platform. He appears as though he has an idea of what problem he wants to solve, but he does not seem to have a very concrete idea about how to go about doing it. He has created 2 platforms in an attempt to solve it, but the first one failed due to insufficient market research, leading to them shutting down the platform due to complicated job posting steps. The second one is in a dormant state, with outdated functionalities.
I felt that as a start-up, it is important to really conduct your market research properly, figure out what key aspects should be part of the solution, and think if there is a fast way of developing it. The CEO does not seem to have a clear understanding of what is required to be done. This causes the team to lose faith in the leader, causing potential problems and even worse, them leaving the company after successive failures. This means that it is the most important to have a well-defined idea, and then an appropriate team to implement the idea. A terrible idea will drive even the best teams away.
Korbit is quite an interesting start-up though. I was surprised that some actually commented that they are an innovative solution. They are simply another BitCoin exchange platform, even though they may be the first one in Korea. The architecture of setting up BitCoin exchanges have been created by successful exchange markets such as Kraken and BTC-e. They are simply copying the infrastructure, and changing the language and transactional currency to Korean. However, it seem to have managed to convince investors to throw in money. From this, it seems that investors are not looking out for the next global idea, but rather, they are accepting of ideas that are "innovative" in their own aspect (Korbit / Naver in Korea), as long as there are money making potential. Conversely, this means that it is actually a viable option to look into successful ideas overseas, and "localise" them as a new start-up for us. The key thing to note would be to get the first-mover advantage, which allows them to corner the market. While others took months to develop a platform, Korbit's MVP was developed within 20 days, giving him a headstart against potential competition when it comes to seeking investment opportunities and market shares.
In our last day of company visit, we visited Seoul TOPIS, Auctionary and Korbit. From the visit to Seoul TOPIS, which controls Seoul transportation system, shared us about brief history and I have chance to see some of the advanced traffic monitoring and disaster alert systems. After that, we visited Auctionary and CEO of the company shared us about his personal finding with language translation industry pain point and wanted to do a platform that allows customers meet directly with freelance translators. He gave us important highlights with his first idea of the product failure with not proper market analysis in the current industry. He quickly learned from the mistake and change his company direction. I learnt from that meeting with CEO, having a concrete business idea and proper market analysis help to reduce the chance of failure when the product/service is launched. As the last visit of company visit, we visited to Korbit which is a leading Bitcoin exchange in Korea. Korbit offers the service of exchanging between Bitcoin and Korea Won (vice vasa). CEO of Korbit, Mr. Tony, shared us about the detailed concept of Bitcoin and how he has started this business. From the visit, I learnt that, it is important to come up quickly a minimum viable product so that it allows the company to go into the market to have better advantage. Also, knowing to identify exactly, which part of bottleneck or lacking that your company trying to solve to is equally important in starting a startup company.
Seoul Topis
At Seoul Topis, they introduced a lot of transport related technology. The thing that impressed me is the "ezlink" card for taxi. Although we can also use credit/nets card to pay for our taxi fee, it feels different by using the ezlink card. To me, it's amazing because if Singapore implemented this, I will be able to pay all travel related money just by a single card. They also have the secure taxi service which I felt that it's really helpful. That's because our parents will be able to know when we board the taxi and is able to fetch us at the door/void deck when we are reaching. In this way, they will be less worried for us especially when we return home late.
Another learning point is how they arrange their buses. They make use of colors such as blue bus are for city bus, green bus is to connect the subway. The bus number is also based on the area that they travel. By splitting Korea into parts, a bus 271 will start from area 2, going pass area 7 and ending at area 1. All this indicator are useful because we will be able to know which bus is going to which area. And this is done just by looking at the color and number without looking at the bus directory.
Auctionory
It is important to do market research. Auctionory failed their first product because they did not do a good market research. In order to determine if the translator is good, they implemented a function whereby their client will put up a sample paragraph and the interested translator will have to translate them. However, Auctionory failed to realised that the reason their client find them is because they are unable to read the source/target text. It also means that they are unable to understand either of the text hence unable to determine which translator is better.
I also learnt that we should start small. Just like the Facebook founder who started off in his room with his laptop. It don't need to be a 24hr work, instead we should earn some money through other means as we will not be able to earn much at the starting part of start-up. Although looking for a partner have disadvantage such as lack of trust, it is still good to have 1 so that we can discuss and share the workload.
Korbit
At the visit to Korbit, I learnt more about BitCoin. From him, I learnt that when someone must organized and record the transaction. Example if Charlie fulfilled all the requirements, then he will earn more BitCoin. The requirement is to have a digital fingerprint that start with 00000. Arbitrary number can be added to the initial number to become 00000 at the front. The lesser the number the better.
Since the goal is to have the longest BitCoin block, hackers will find it hard to hack. Because the number will be different thus unable to create a long chain.
The technology in Korea is so advanced. I was amazed at how Seoul TOPIS had such advanced technology that allows for Big Data Analytics. Just imagining the amount of data input to plot the map of traffic flow was mind-blowing. The system even allowed for predictive analysis to analyse the congestion levels when a particular road is blocked. In Singapore, even the prediction systems available for bus timings aren’t accurate at all.
The founder of Auctionary shared with us his failures and success stories. What I made out of it is the fact that a business idea needs to be thought out well. Market research is the most basic step that must be done thoroughly.
The inspiration I got from Korbit was the fact that the founder took 20 days to code from scratch and launched Korbit itself. Although he failed his first few startups, we can learn from the spirit of entrepreneurship and to pick ourselves up after failing.
