1415T2g1 South Korea/Reflection/day5
South Korea
| Day 2 |
Contents
Day 5: Reflections
Quick Introduction of Seoul Topis
Learning Point from Seoul Topis
- Difficult to perfectly imitate a transportation planning a one country to another - the different circumstances in different countries makes it difficult to implement same policies. For example, both Korea and Singapore tried implementing bicycle for loans which has garnered little success in both countries, but due to totally different reason. The plan failed in Singapore due to its climate, while for Korea, the plan was not successful due to its terrain and the different stakeholders which did not support the idea.
Quick Introduction of Auctionary
Learning Points from Auctionary
- Problems can be identified at anytime and anywhere – Ron Yang identified the problem while working for a German company, where he was required to find a translation service for his work. He noticed the different quality in the translation service and found out that agencies may sometime engage freelance translators which were taking bulk of the profit from these freelance translators.
- Have to do what is good for the company – after a month in the market, Ron Yang decided to close the application as he felt that there were insufficient preparations in marketing the product, coupled with some UI problems. Although he lost some of his developers with such a decision, he decided to close the application in view of the long run.
Quick Introduction of Korbit
Learning Point from Korbit
- Learned a lot more in the field of Bitcoin – The founder of Bitcoin has introduced us to a relatively new concept in the global market and his clear explanation increased my curiosity in the e-payment industry.
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.
Seoul Topis
Auctionary
Korbit
Seoul Topis
I was quite shocked but pleased that Seoul Topis actually allowed us to do a company tour in the office - a place where ministers and other high ranking stakeholders usually hold their meeting at! Seoul Topis is very passionate about serving their citizens and have made use of several very advanced technology, such as data analytics, to do so. They aim to provide their citizens with accurate and real time data to aid them in planning their travel routes in order to avoid congested areas. To do so, they went to the extend of developing high end technologies systems and infrastructures, made use of the satellites and CCTVs on the street roads to produce real time data. Apart from having the passion to serve their citizens, the Q&A session also made me realised that Seoul Topis really do care about their citizens. Instead of forcing policies into place, they actually bother to convince their citizens of their future plans before they implement it. They want to ensure that their citizens are aware of their plans and are in agreement before they proceed to develop it. Besides, they also keep track of stuff posted on the different social media platforms to gain feedbacks from their citizens for rooms
Auctionary
Mr Ronald Yang from Auctionary raised a very good point that with the advancement of technologies, it's only a matter of time before people will be put out of jobs. For example, with the development of Robot Taxis, taxi drivers will soon be out of jobs. Thus it is very important for us to be pro-active and be kept up with the technology trends. This is so that when we develop a start up, we do not use a sunset technology and instead, make use of the new and upcoming technologies in order to stay competitive.
Korbit
Korbit's presentation once again emphasized on the essence of time. The CEO mentioned that in his first start up, he lost out to his competitors as he took too long to develop his solution. This reminded me what I've learnt over the past few days to not reinvent the wheel. If there are existing technologies or infrastructure done by others, we should just customise/ manipulate from them and do not reinvent the wheel. A good idea must also be accompanied with a good time, else other competitors may arise while you're in the midst of reinventing the wheel.
I'm also reminded that self development is very important, and this applies even if we are not in a start up scene. The CEO of Korbit took a year to learn programming just so that he does not need to rely on his programmers and also to have a better understanding on the role of a programmer.
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.
The companies we visited today are very different from each other and I had several takeaways from each of them. Seoul Topis's current approach of a human oriented, human centric transportation system is akin to the concept of how today’s systems, applications and technologies are developed with the end users in mind. There has also been a steady shift in the government’s actions, from being highly dictative when it comes to enforcing policies, to a more collaborative one. For instance, instead of forcing upon drivers and owners of street-side stalls to abide to the rules, the government will now do their best to convince all relevant stakeholders before implementing a major policy change. In this way, it will ensure greater public acceptance and adoption.
From the conversation with the founder of Auctionary, I realized that he is probably in the stage Mr. Cho (Pristones CEO) talked about, when the entrepreneur implements their ideas and keep trying without actually understanding the real user needs and problems. In my opinion, I also feel that his idea is relatively easy to be replicated by others and it will be difficult to differentiate the product from other existing sites. Hence, the feasibility and sustainability of this idea certainly requires many more months of extensive market research before moving back to development.
Although bitcoin is not widely used currently, I foresee that the growth of users will increase substantially in the coming 5 – 10 years. Hence, Korbit is in a very good position as it will be one of the pioneers in the bitcoin revolution. I feel that the first mover advantage they gain is especially crucial for their future survival. This is especially true when the market will eventually cast away all other similar competitors and choose to stick with only a few of such companies. Therefore, it is imperative for Korbit to aim to achieve a large user base early.
I am glad I had the opportunity to learn from so many experts in the start-up scene in these 5 days. Throughout the various company visits, I was able to better appreciate their struggles and gain a better understanding of the myriad of elements revolving around the start-up ecosystem. I will definitely internalize what I have learnt from this trip and hopefully it will come in handy when I run my own start-up / business in the future!
Seoul TOPIS
I am very grateful that I had the chance to get a comprehensive introduction of Seoul’s various transport systems which work together seamlessly to provide its citizens with a highly efficient transit experience. I was really amazed by the amount of real time information that is able to be displayed in the control room, which is only possible via extensive integration between the various parts of Seoul’s transport systems.
Auctionory
I was really impressed by Mr Yang the CEO of auctionory who shared the problems and mistake building his first product.
Some key takeaways are:
- the importance of doing market research before creating a product
- the importance of defining a right problem and come out with a concrete solution that can eliminate potential risk
- Similar to JJS he mentioned the importance of focusing a specific group and think of expansion only after you have successfully dominated that market group.
Korbit
Some key learning point from Korbit the Korea leading bitcoin exchange:
- The concept behind cryptocurrency arises from a need to deviate from a centralized currency system which involves multiple parties at different layers such as the central banks, merchant banks, merchants and buyers. Such a centralized currency system requires extensive oversight over all these parties and is inefficient. Cryptocurrency such as bitcoin utilizes a decentralized system that relies on crowdsourcing to verify the authenticity of transactions for higher security.
The visit to Seoul TOPIS was indeed an eye-opener. We were awed by the way advanced technology was utilised to gather big data, and filtered to sieve out necessary information to solve the city's complicated and multi-faceted transportation issues. Everyone travels everyday, yet nobody really thinks and understands much about what is behind their seamless travelling experience. Although Seoul TOPIS has done well in its back-end operational transportation planning, but I feel that more resources can be invested to improve the tangible aspects of the transportation system, such as building escalators and introducing new fleets of trains and buses to further improve people's travelling experience.
My most significant takeaway from Auctionory was the importance of investing efforts in pre-implementation market research and having good business foresight. This reminded me of a lesson learnt from my previous internship: Always start by thinking big. Not only can a startup gain a stronger consumer foothold by starting in a big market, but such a strategy also allows for easier customisation and localisation to smaller markets in the same region. As the saying goes, if one fails to plan, one will plan to fail. This is also the cause of failure and wasted time and efforts at the initial stage of Auctionory's development which we can learn from. In addition, one should also keep in mind fast-changing developments that may pose as threats to the future sustainability of our business. This is especially relevant in the case of Auctionory's translation service, which faces strong competition from Google Translate as well as other translation applications.
Seoul TOPIS
The concept of human-oriented transport reminds us that the goal of technology is really to improve the quality of life. In line with this, Seoul TOPIS truly puts the welfare and satisfaction of the passengers at top priority. “IT may not be the solution to everything, the most important is to win the hearts of the people.”
1. Prioritising the satisfaction of the end consumer – Seoul TOPIS provides differing levels of support to private bus companies based on how well they perform in terms of passenger satisfaction.
2. Gaining the acceptance of citizens before implementing major initiative changes (such as the bicycle paths) instead of forcing it down their throats like before. This clearly shows a change in governing approach and a change in the way citizens want to be governed.
3. Being sensitive to the needs of different target groups – e.g. voiceovers are provided within the transportation apps for blind passengers.
Auctionary
Of all the company visits on this TSM, I resonated with the sharing of Auctionary’s founder the most. Through his sharing of the ups and downs in his start-up journey, I think the most important criteria for entrepreneurs is a persevering mind-set and viewing each obstacle as a learning opportunity to be a stronger person.
When the team realised what they had been working on for a year was wrong, it was very painful for the founder to face the reality that what he had been telling his team to believe in for the past year was wrong. His ability in overcoming this brick wall, pivoting the company and getting the remaining team members to continue believing in him demonstrates his entrepreneurial mindset to keep persevering and brave the storms.
Korbit
Korbit’s founder inspired me to invest time and effort into learning coding. In his first start-up, he did not know how to code and outsourced the development. After closing his first start-up, he made the decision to learn how to code so that he will be able to develop the platform of his second start-up independently.
After spending the next one year learning how to code, he was empowered to launch Korbit just 20 days after coming up with the idea of a Bitcoin exchange. As a business student with no background in programming, I’ve always believed the ability to code is an extremely valuable skill in this tech start-up world. After hearing Korbit’s story, it has really inspired me to dedicate time to learn how to code, starting from this summer.
Seoul Topis
Seoul Topis is an integrated transport information and service system for South Korea and we had the rare opportunity to sit in a boardroom that foreign dignitaries use to discuss about policies and ways to improve transportation in many countries. From the visit, I have picked up some advice that can also be applied in starting up a business.
- Make it human-oriented, user-friendly, and eco-friendly.
- There are always alternative ways for improvement. For example, Seoul Topis realised that building infrastructure was not an effective way to solve the problem of traffic congestion. Hence, they put their focus into managing traffic congestion.
Auctionary
Auctionary is a crowd sourced translation platform and from the founder, I've learnt 3 things.
- Start with a small market and then slowly expand your target market
- Market research and knowing your competitors is important
- Always look for people who can value add to your business
Korbit
Tony from Korbit shared with us that his first startup didn't go well and he realised that 5 other companies had the same idea as him. From this, I've learnt that if we should be open to accept failure and embrace failure as a learning opportunity.
With this, I wrap up my 5 days of learning from 18 companies !
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.
Seoul Topis
Korea transportation’s development is amazing. Currently, Seoul has 10.5 million people, there are 31.5 million trips per days, 68.9 passengers, 292 stations and 1495 environmentally friendly buses. On the average, 88.5% of the passengers are satisfied with the service provided. The technology application in transportation system is extensive here in Korea. Even if you don’t have mobile data and smartphone, messaging service and QR code are available for you to obtain the information on the transportation. Users can track the bus schedule exactly and make sure there is no delay and time waste in schedule. In addition, the system is an integrated system in which you can use only one card for all the service. Currently the policy of Seoul Topis is the human oriented, in which Topis encourage more usage of greener transport. The centralized system of traffic information has helped Topis collect huge data over the year. With that, Seoul Topis can actually predict the transportation traffic and implement proper policy. Topis’ presentation left a huge impact on me - the cooperation of technology and human policy has created an almost perfect transportation system. The scene I often only see in movie is recreated again during presentation: you can see everything over screens. I felt really blessed to be able to visit Topis during our TSM trip. I hope that one day, we can develop something like that in my country Vietnam. There are so much to learn from two system of transportation in Singapore and Korea.
Auctionory
Having a lean startup is indeed important for any startup which can help startup to lower resources needed and also capital. Once again, the careful and detail of market research is further enhanced. You need to understand the market to the detail and provide a product that will add value to market. Failure to do so would lead to low demand for the startup which explains the first failure of the founder. He could not solve the homework of matching demand and supply, the market didn’t react in the way he predicted. In addition, one also has to be prepared to not spend everyday working on the startup development in its early stages as it is necessary to pay the employees too. Hence, it is alright if the startup provides services to other companies (e.g website development) to earn some cash flow during this period of time. The founder advise us that it is good to start now but don’t put 24 hours per day on your startup, spend your time wisely. Last but not least, the founder shared many up and down moments during his hard time. Currently it is not absolutely a good time, but things are stable now. Yet when he shared about the difficulty he experienced, I cant help but my heart shrank. I guess it is the emotional cycle when there is one point of time you may no longer have trust in even yourself cause you failed badly. It kind helps me be prepared for mu startup in future.
Korbit
Bitcoin was a aliens topic to me before the visit to Korbit. However, the thing strike me most is the fact that: use of Bitcoin will reduce the counterparty risk and if all bank adopt Bitcoin operation, it will disrupt the whole financial system. Most probably I will go back and try to understand about Bitcoin more in detail given I am Economics and Finance student. One of the lessons I learnt from the visit was that it is important or good for the founder to have the basic knowledge/ minimum requirement for the product he wants to build. I admire the founder’s brain as he can spent just one year of learning the coding language and come up with his idea in 20 days. From his sharing, I feel that your idea is the most genuine when you want to solve your own problems. The founder has taken his extra mile to understand the operation of Bitcoin, all by himself and then implement his system. Due to his first mover advantage, he has monopoly power the market.
Learning lessons: It is important to Quickly get over failure and set-backs and be prepared to pivot
Fear of failure is one of the biggest things that holds entrepreneurs back.
Successful entrepreneurs view failure as a momentary set back, not a business-ending event. The inspiring story from Ronald Yang has taught me that when you experience failure, realize it’s not the end of the world and be determine to come back even stronger because of it.
More importantly, you must able to pivot and get your business back on track. Despite the failure that he encountered, resulting in two of his developers leaving the group, he continued to persevere and pivoted his business. One should also note that you cannot be that “know it all” entrepreneur. We have to be humble, learn from these lessons and remember not to apply the same mistake again.
Conclusion: Starting a startup is like a rafting trip, not a roller coaster ride
Unlike a roller coaster, which was designed to thrill you and keep you safe, starting a startup is like a rafting trip where one would travel through the rapids representing the wild, untamed markets we’re going after .A path that few have traveled before.
Like deciding to travel to a remote river, no one forced you onto your startup journey; you chose it. If you make it though, the glory of your achievement will come from the difficulty of the course you charted and whether and how often others have achieved the same thing before. Rafting isn’t all exhilaration either. There can be long, slow stretches of weak current where you exhaust yourself trying to build momentum and remaining optimistic about your vision. However, this can be overcome if you do your homework, know the maps by heart, and do your best. With luck, planning, and a great team, you’ll make it through. Not many people have the stomach for this journey, and if you find that you are not cut out for this, there are plenty of safe, seat-belted seats on the roller coasters.(Representing large corporations which offers you a stable pay)
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.
From my visit to Seoul Topis, I had a chance to learn about the origin and development of the transportation system in Seoul and how integrated the systems were in providing real time data. I also saw how information systems can play a vital role in setting up the transportation network. I also learnt that it is always important to strive for constant improvements as having a great idea does not guarantee that your competitors cannot replace you. From my visit to Auctionary, I learnt the importance of doing sufficient market research, having a clear plan to monetize your product, understand the challenges that your start-up will face and prepare possible measures to deal with it as not doing so will probably lead to high risk of failure. From my visit to Korbit, I had a better understanding of how Bitcoin works and I learnt about why block chain process is used so as to ensure that hackers are unable to manipulate transactions. Lastly, this is a point common in many companies I visited, Mr Tony mentioned the importance of having the first mover advantage as his first company failed as he took a long time to launch his product.
Seoul Topis
I learnt that Seoul’s transportation system was not a by product of chance, but due to a vision by the government to create an efficient and effective transportation system. We learnt about how much research, analysis and work went into creating the current transportation that we see in Seoul today.
Auctionary From the CEO, we learnt that while the founders may think that their initial idea is good or foolproof, it is still likely possible that the idea may fail due to lack of market research and strategy. When facing failure for their initial ideas, it may result in their co-founders and employees becoming jaded with the company direction as well as about their future in the startup. While this would mean that some members of their startup might leave, the ones that stayed would usually be the ones that are really believe in the company vision and are usually aligned to the Company Founders ideals. Such trial by fire may further prepare the startup for the next pivot for their idea and i believe having such team members and experience of failure would usually make their potential for success a stronger one.
Korbit In Singapore, Bitcoin has come tight scrunity and is not recognised as a legitimate currency. As such, it is difficult for firms dealing with Bitcoin to even find the support or confidence from investors for help. Fortunately for South Korea, Startups that deal with Financial Technology such as Bitcoin have some additional leeway and recognition, and thus are able to grow at their fuller potential. Bitcoin is still a burgeoning currency , but with functions such as a bitcoin exchange and an information website for local bitcoin performance, i believe that Korbit would definitely succeed in growing both their userbase as well as helping make bitcoin a more legitimate currency in Seoul and beyond.
