1516T2g1 South Korea/Reflection/day3
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Contents
Day 3: Reflections
Seoul National University
Starting a business while a student requires endurance, passion and friends.
Park started Educast during his university studies at SNU and has been growing it ever since. He shared that he got the idea one fine day but got it to work with his engineering friends. This emphasized that having a circle of friends interested in starting up is pretty important in turning the ideas into reality. He had to compromise between grades by taking lesser modules and spend time growing the product. Combined with the high legal constraints in education, the motivation factor ultimately lies in believing in the product and the cause – making people succeed with you.
On a side note, I got to mingle with some of the SNU students and learnt that their curriculum structure (3 months semester, and 3 months break with an average of 5-6 modules per semester). Generally, I get the vibe that the students there possess a studious composure and a general want to attain knowledge.
Finotek
Passion > Technology
Kim Woo-Sup, CEO of Finotek’s philosophy to doing business is sincerity and trust. I thought this viewpoint is integral in building a great business. Behind this belief is passion for managing and growing employees. “the future will come at a time which we least expect”, he suggested one should have foresight through reading books and training the logical mind to anticipate the next wave of opportunities. This was how he and his team built a disruptive solution to the highly inefficient mortgage process which currently earns Finotek a total of 4.3bil won (S$515k) in capital. Lastly, this passion ultimately drives strong ambition which Finotek aims to IPO in NASDAQ and Aim in the near future. This is truly admirable.
BeNative
Build your territory in the market through sound market analysis and constant effort to find new ways to innovate.
Alan Moonsoo Kim, CEO and founder of BeNative – an English language education application, taught me that in order to be in the market, one must understand the competition and the right time to execute solutions. This is done through market analysis (i.e. porter’s 5 forces). I was personally inspired by his willingness in new learning and putting current trends in innovation to practice (i.e. he picked up data science course to apply analytics via deep learning in BeNative). I thought this is how a CEO should aim to be.
On a personal note, the company’s new application CashEnglish – application to learn English through games and rewards sparked an idea in me. I thought that a similar application could be developed to target the elementary school students through easy and fun way to learn by leveraging on Montessori concepts. See how.
Memebox
A data-driven culture promotes accurate decision-making and product success
Dino, CEO of Memebox constantly emphasized the importance of indexing the brand and the company. This means the company tracks everything, from product analytics to company employee status. This core competency of using data science allows Memebox to push new products out every week, which is an almost impossible task without a great amount of intelligent data analysis. This is surely a nugget for me as I prefer concrete and measurable goals and performance in management and will be a constant reminder of its importance.
Some other gleanings from the great guy: • Always willing to learn and staying foolish and hungry no matter how the business will change • Start small, start with friends • Visit Silicon Valley, be IN the culture of starting businesses • Learning how to handle explosive growth is also key in growth
Seoul National University's Seoul Techno Holdings, Inc
Park, CEO of Educast
- Admit one's mistakes and learn from them.
- Don't hire too many people, keep it lean, more staff much actually decrease productivity.
- Hiring talents is tougher than raising fund
- Regretted taking the startup path at first, then found purpose in it: helping people succeed with him
- Localization will prevail over international competitors
Finotek
- Foresight is key - foresaw that there will be online bank without branches, and they need service like Finotek's
- By reading and thinking logically, one can gain more foresights, once there is foresight, we should set the goal and head straight in the path towards it.
- Endurance is fundamental to realize the foresight.
- Networking is also important, with more connections, it is more likely to find and form a team with the same dream & goal in mind.
- Passion trumps technology
- With the long endurance and accurate foresight by Finotek founders, they were able to create a holistic, comprehensive, and reliable service that gained the banks' and goverment agencies' trust.
SMATOOS, Inc - BeNative Pro
- Founder had a personal need to learn business English, therefore the idea.
- Reputation and experience holds great weight - The serial entrepreneur background led to investors funding the founder without much thought given.
- Architecture of the content allowed them to scale easily to other languages - just change subtitles.
- "How does your product differentiate from others?" can be interpreted as "Will you be able to create your own market?"
- Learning organization is one that invests in its people and adapt based on what they learn.
memebox
- Data-driven operations - products and decisions are based on data
- Exploration (vs exploitation) is riskier short term, but safer in the long term
- Common mistake by entrepreneurs - finding the perfect team to work with, instead one should start anyway and make the team work.
- Again, endurance is key - "Everyone says China is a market to be in, but they are not making enough investments." and he budgets 50-60% for China market.
- Infrastructure and scability is worth the investment, because it is a bigger risk when the customers are rolling in but have no products to purchse (i.e. out of stock due to low production/storage capability)
- Price of marketing campaigns are relative to the market size (4mil expensive in Korea but cheap in China)
- Take leadership to make the difficult but beneficial change - shutdown the web app internal to make staff adopt, use, and improve the mobile app.
SNU
Similair to SMU IIE but in a much larger scale, SNU too has their own incubation chambers. They follow 4 main process: Discover, incubating, accelerating and investing. A startup that spoke to us, Educast told us about his journey and experience for the start-up. Their goal was to distribute online resources to people. They made many mistakes such as hiring too many people at the start and its also hard to retain good staffs as many will want to go big companies upon graduation. The most important lesson from this session is that start-ups are demanding to our lives and we might have to might choices about it(delay graduation).
Finotek
Finotek focuses on trust and sincerity to deliver their solution to their customer. They are the platform that enable banks to do online verification on their customers in a seamless manner. 3 main takeaways, 1st is that forecasting the trend is extremely important. 2nd is endurance as you need to tide through the first stage of difficultities and overcome them. 3rd will be teamwork as working in a team with the same goal and passion, your goals will be achieved much quicker.
BeNative
The company SMATOOS founded BeNative on the basis of teaching business language to business people by business people. They do this by interviewing powerful people in powerful company and analysing words they used. BeNative is largely engaged by the Chinese government & many Korean organisations to educate and teach their members English language or Chinese. It is a paid service or a free service with advertisements. The biggest lesson I learnt is that superior sales is enough and product differentiation is not always necessary.
MEMEBOX
MEMEBOX aims to merge engineering with aesthetics biology by delivering cheap beauty products to their consumers with the help of popular bloggers and models. This company adopts an American style approach in managing the business as the words “San Francisco” was mentioned multiple times during his speech. Mobile is the main channel of income for the company. I learnt that there mainly 4 phases in a start-up. Firstly, making money. Secondly, serve or building a community. Thirdly, changing the industry and lastly, creating an impact on humanity.
SNU
Seoul National University is the top university in Korea. Similar to SMU’s IIE, SNU has it own Seoul Technological Holdings that houses a variety of student start ups. Specifically, one of the success story belongs to Educast, an online education platform. As the private education industry in Korea is highly regulated, Educast had to adapt and work around with the strict legal enforcements. Another interesting point to note in Korea start ups is the emphasis placed on localizing. For instance, Google is not thriving as well as Naver in Korea despite being a global leader for search engine. Therefore, some start ups aim to and believe that it is sufficient to just be the local best.
Finotek
Finotek develops loan mortgage mobile phone technologies for banks. They are relatively well funded and ambitious as they are planning to expand globally into the East Asian market within a short period of time. What impacted me the most was the CEO's speech as he emphasized greatly on sincerity and trust in all that we do in order to succeed in the long run.
BeNative
BeNative is a language educational platform for businesses. They mainly focus on creating content for teaching English targeting East Asian countries. One unique feature of CashEnglish, their second application, is the use of gamification. Gamification has been proven to be an effective engagement tool if it is used strategically. Cash is used as rewards as well. Although the cash was generated using their advertisements, I feel that it would not be sustainable in the long run given that it would lose it attractiveness over time.
Memebox
Memebox is an ecommerce platform for beauty products. From the sharing session, I learnt that change management is essential within the organization. Over time, new trends and opportunity arise and organization need to have the foresight as well as the right strategy to tackle new threats. The CEO saw the need to change from web platform to mobile platform as he saw most of the transactions took place on the mobile platform. Realizing that internal change was a challenge as employees are resistant to the new platform, he strictly enforced it by shutting down the web platform. Employees although were not used to the new platform eventually adapted. Hence as an undergrad who is about to enter workforce, I would constantly remind myself to be flexible and adaptable to constant changes.
Learning Points for SNU
- Compared to SMU, SNU has an entire building dedicated for entrepeurship and they do not limit students from a specific faculty
- Students are free to hire and fire outsiders, talent and their classmates for a fee
- Startups doing localization of an existing service can develop a niche in their home countries
Learning Points for Finotek
- If nobody understands my question, make it less complicated. I tried to give a context so the presenters could understand better, but it seems the language barrier is way too high.
- Apply the above the point to action - learn & do it!!!
Learning Points for BeNative
- BN started out by carving a new market for itself - in that way we get 100% market share! also, we have fresh opportunities given there is fresh market demand for it
- Company culture has to begin from the inception of the company
- Hierarchy, while existent, shouldn't take fun out of work
- Startups can rely on funding and extend their breakeven duration in order to build an awesome service
- Leaders should invest in continual learning of their employees - PHD, masters, etc - and also get avenues for staff to destress - punching bag & sound studio
- A strong backer gives the founder the freedom and leisure to let his ideas flourish - Dino had the success of his first company in his pocket and the money from the merger. He could be a serial entrepeneur.
- Key stakeholders have to move to new markets to place weight and emphasis on the importance when entering new markets.
1. SNU
Seoul National University has a very well-organized campus with efforts to help budding startups. Through our time spent at SNU, we were able to witness the student area at the engineering building and also able to learn from experience of EduCast. I feel that it is important for universities to employ various methods to help individuals fulfil their passions and dreams of starting up a company.
2. Finotek
Finotek provides automation of mortgage processing who plans to make a standardised, global platform for use. I found the time taken to complete a mortgage loan transaction impressive as they were able to make a 2-3 days process to be accomplished in 30 minutes and also managed to reduce fees by 78%. They have also placed emphasis on the importance of sincerity to their employees as they feel that employee welfare is integral to the success of the firm.
3. BeNative
BeNative focuses on helping individuals understand business English conversations. I believe that many individuals would find this application very useful because explanations were given by actual CEOs. Furthermore, the reward based on usage application influences users to make use of the application for a longer time.
4. Memebox
Memebox provided a refreshing experience. Although I am not personally into makeup, there was a lot of foresight, creativeness and innovativeness that the founder, Mr Dino Ha, was able to apply to the curated beauty products. Memebox is significantly increasing in popularity and I feel that they have a greater potential of expanding their influence because of their affordable beauty products ($10-$20). Their mobile app has provided greater outreach to women all over the world.
Seoul National University
It was one of the best visits so far apart from all the startups. We were brought around the engineering school and the students at SNU were very friendly and welcoming to us. Before the visit to engineering school, one of the students shared with us about his start up journey where he balance his school life and work life when he started his own start up when he was 20.His vision sense of achievement is that he is happy when he is able to help others to see that they are successful when they are with the startup company reaping the benefits of their fruit of labor.
Finotek
From the presentation from Finotek, the presentation that is gave my Finotek was very comprehensive. How Finotek is acting as a middle person by utilizing on technology to streamline and speed up the process of a 3 days’ workflow to a 30 minutes change instead. The CEO gave a speech which emphasizes how important it is to follow our passion. A small company which has a great vision trying to be a global market and wants to have plans to expand globally. The points mention by the CEO, Foresight and to have endurance is important whenever we do a work. This will thus keep us going to move forward towards our dream.
BeNative
This was the second startup that is focusing on providing education towards the people. The whole idea of BeNative is a language app that allows people to learn how top business people perform their daily deals. They shared with us their future goals, such as the BeNative Global, XXXX app where it includes Gamification and incentives to entice people to use the app and play it. This is a form of 2 way deal where users would benefit from learning a new language and the company can gain from the number of downloads. I would love to see the launch of the app on the app store soon, as they promised us with a 1 year of free membership
Memebox
Mr Dino shared about his journey and all his challenges he faced as the CEO of memebox. The 4 phases of a startup, (1) Make money,(2) Build a community, (3) changing the industry, (4) impact of humanity is the focus of a startup. He says that he Memebox values his employees first and then his customers. This approach compared to other companies is different; it’s the other way around. Furthermore, Mr Dino was a drop out of college but he is still a successful entrepreneur that is recognized by many investors world wide.In addition, Memebox is going to open in Sinapore next month and also other countries in the 4S. Looking forward to seeing Memebox in Singapore soon
SNU
The CEO of EduCast , Park, shared that when he first started out, he struggled a lot due to funding. He could not get one office because he does not have enough money. He have to manage study and work at the same time, but what he need to do is to compromise as there is no way he can satisfy both. He mentioned that he have to compromise with his grades and take more semesters than his friends too because of the startup. I feel this is a huge sacrifice he had done and there is sure to be regrets but he feel that what’s important is he found what he want to do with his life, having his aim, he can look forward and work towards that aim. Life is always full of regrets, but we should always do what we want so that you can see the results of your baby at the end even though you had sacrificed a lot.
Finotek
Finotek philosophy is sincerity and trust. They emphasize it. I agree with what they doing because without sincerity and trust, there will sure to be problems in cooperating with each other. People will keep doubting each other and it will be hard to bring the company to greater heights.
BeNative
The company has many people with much diverse background, making it easier for generation of more ideas to help to improve the company. With people from much background, we can have many more brains to think of a better idea to improve the app. As what is said, team that give positive feedback and changing what need to be change, people will be dedicated to do it as well as they see the company is making an effort to change things which feedback had been given to improve the company.
MemeBox
I was really shocked when the CEO mentioned that he left his job on Friday and started his company, MemeBox on Monday with just $8000 dollars with his friend. I feel that it is such a daring step and we need a lot of courage to be able to do it. I am surprised he does not have a backup plan on it, and he still managed to succeed.
SNU
The talk by founder of EduCast proved that full time studies should not hinder you from building a startup. I also love the pizza and hospitality by the students in SNU.
Finotek
The open APIs were put to a great use in finotek's context in streamlining the finance sector (bank loans).
BeNative
The make up of the company is important esp in beNative as having a diverse team helps generate more ideas which made it easier for the service launch more smoothly on a global platform.
Memebox
I like that the CEO makes calculated risks and set his sights and investment on the China market and does not mind that it is losing money now as he believes that it will be profiting in the long term by looking at the data they have collected through deep data analysis and engineering. Simply brilliant.
SNU
SNU is probably one of the largest universities in South Korea where students are overflowing with so much potential and ideas. We were given a talk by the CEO of Educast, which is a platform where users can view and upload courses regarding any educational subject. He delivered a passionate and professional speech about how he differentiated his service from other startups. I learnt how important it is to capture the right target audience, no matter what kind of idea you have in mind for a startup.
Finotek
Despite being a relatively small company, it has managed to spend a whopping amount of $50 million in the last 8 years. It has reduced the time taken to apply for a loan to just 30 minutes which I found to be pretty amazing. I learnt how sincerity and trust is especially important for such companies that deal with monetary transactions online.
BeNative
To be honest, I was thoroughly impressed by the whole team at BeNative. What they are doing to impact the TechEd industry is simply inspiring and amazing. The company offers courses to individuals to pick up English business expressions that are used by CEOs of various companies.
Through their presentation, I learnt how important foresight is when sustaining a startup –
BeNative has demonstrated that really well by constantly being ahead of themselves, thinking of the next big thing to increase profits.
Memebox
He quit his job on Friday and started a new one on Monday. That was probably the boldest thing I’ve heard and this came from the mouth of the founder of Memebox. To my understanding, the company undergoes an almost exponential growth every year since their start in 2012. I learnt how your mindset can really affect the way you conduct your business. This is especially true in Memebox where the culture in determined by the founder himself.
Seoul National University (SNU)
"That's one small step for a man but one leap step for a startup"
I'm really glad to be able to visit SNU as it is one of the most prestigious school in Seoul. The incubation center's layout is interesting whereby the highest floor is for freshmen and the lowest floor is for seniors which imploes they are ready to exit soon.
One of the entrepreneurs shared about how SNU accepted his startup which is to distribute online courses to the public. To him, funding was not the hardest part but it was about hiring the right people to join him. We also had conversation with the engineering students to share about similarities and differences between Korea and Singapore .
Finotek
Philosophy : sincerity and trust
Fiontek (Finance Innovation and Technology) sees the emerging trend of online bank platform For the last 8 years, they spent more than $50 million dollars and they aim to be expand to other countries. The start-up’s app is able to shorten the time from 2-3 days to 30 minutes to get your mortgage loan done - One day mobile mortgage
-Conduct information based identity authentication to recognize real time dynamic information of the signature
-Anytime anywhere accessible robo counseling solutions through a natural language processing algorithm
It is evident that the fintech industry is growing very fast and I’m looking forward to seeing more fintech related startups that can cause a significant impact.
BeNative
Real global English from real global CEOs
Selected as in house education service for major Korean companies like lotte, Samsung and LG Idea started with the founder wanting to learn English - needs of founder Existing services could not provide global English provider Secured content from 300 American and 100 Chinese companies Begin with b2b strategy -> end up with a globalization strategy from b2c in the Asian market
Unique Selling Point (USP) - over 70% of BeNative's content cannot be found anywhere else
Learning method
1) real interview video
2) Lecture video
3) Exercise
4) Vocabulary
5) Test
Using video instead of from textbook, people can see the natural way of how an action is supposed to be done. Practices the 'reward based learning system' - Using the revenue earned from advertisement and reward the users
Sneak peak of new product – Cashenglish which is to learn English through games and earn rewards by playing English vocabulary puzzles and games. Puzzle game allow users to share their puzzles on social media and use booster items. They already have 300 professional video so if other companies want to copy them would require more than that which is hard therefore they are able to protect their market share
Memebox
Headquarter in Sanfranciso , Founded in 2012 feb
Operates in 5 countries
450 employees
The beauty industry is doing good but the founder believes there is structure to make it better 95% of transactions are done global Currently working with 1100 brands Plan to open 100 stories in Korea Choose to have a more sales oriented direction because they needed more money in order to do more things like build community and change industry
1) start a company to make money
2) observe and build community
3) change the industry
4) impact in humanities
- Launch a new product every Wednesday
- Focus on making the females more confident
- Opening in Singapore next month (YAY!) :)
- Should focus more on China because it is a very big market
SNU
- Strong school support for entrepreneurship within university.
- SNU student community are proactive in enhancing student life by having out of class activities.
EduCast's CEO is particularly insightful because we are able to relate to his story as an undergraduate entrepreneur. He shares the sincerity, energy and openness many CEO embodies.
SNU - STEM (SNU tomorrow's edge membership) visit is fun too as we got to enjoy interacting with smart local students.
Finotek
- Building technology for the future with passion, sincerity and endurance.
CEO kindly shared his wisdom from his extensive experience in various fields, on the importance of foresight, endurance and sincerity. Read for insight, logical thinking and bravely go forward when you found your calling.
BeNative
- Winning without fight (win-win), knowing your enemy (game theory) and setting up your territory.
- Speed of growth should not be limited, be ambitious.
A great experience liaising with a great company who is open to experience and learning. I learnt a great deal from the CEO's strategy in doing business and could sense his sincerity and embodiment of many Asian values. Such a warm office environment makes me feel inclined to work in a similar startup in the future. Finally their quality of their presentation reflects the company's competency and diversity in culture and fields.
Memebox
- Data-driven decision help make safe bets
I have great respect for the CEO who picked up his knowledge and skill through his experience himself. His story also inspires me to venture outside of Singapore and experience the silicon valley culture.
Seoul National University
- They have a 4 step program for startups – discover, incubating, acceleration and investment. Similar to google seoul campus and startup alliance, they provide free office space and funding for the startups in their program.
- Educast: The founder is currently still a student. He had a vision where he wanted to provide a platform where people are able to share their knowledge. He started with 14 people in his startup at the start then the number dropped to 3 workers after when his business was not doing well. A learning point he had from experience was to start small as he found the company to be doing better with three to four workers as compared to previous times when he had 14 workers. He worked around the MOE regulation restrictions for the private education sector through changing his company address. Similar to previous startups which we visited before, he also depends highly on review systems to market his product, together with spreading through word-of-mouth.
Finotek
- Their mission is to try to expand globally by developing the core technology of Finotek. Their company places high emphasis on respect and trust. Some key points that the CEO feels is key to a successful startup is the foresight for future, having endurance, and teamwork within the company where all the team members are sharing the same dream and goal.
- When planning to go global, compared to other startups which usually choose to customize their application according to the country’s regulations, their product is especially scalable as they plan to sell the API to overseas companies to use and self-customize the software when integrating into the respective country’s bank application.
BeNative
- They have a multinational team and promotes learning English through business expressions used by the language’s native speakers. They analysed the market and found that having real global CEOs teach business English is something unique in the market, thus escaping competition. They differentiate themselves from the market in terms of the content whereby 70% of their content cannot be found elsewhere. Through the use of real global CEOs, they establish the credibility of their content thus the people subscribing to their application will be more receptive of the content taught.
- They have very high scalability as the same product can be easily sold at other parts of the world with just a change in the subtitles of their videos, allowing them to easily enter new markets.
- As they found gamification to be the highly receptive and additive, they are coming up with a free application that has advertisements. In this app, there are many gamification features such as gaining experience points, having a leaderboard and a social board. As they are trying to encourage usage of the application, rewards are given as incentives for active participation or usage of the application.
- They have a learning organization culture where everyone in the startup is very open to asking questions and gaining of new knowledge. Their company culture is very diversified and they welcome open minds with fresh ideas. I feel that this is very important in a startup that is growing as such a culture promotes learning amongst fellow colleagues allowing the company to grow together at a faster pace.
Memebox
- They started the company with 8 thousand dollars. Unlike other cosmetic companies, they focus more on the engineering approach with not many beauty experts employed within the company. Through the engineering approach, they were able to identify and predict what type of cosmetics are going to be trending in the future and thus launched their own brand as they found that there is a gap in the market for the cosmetics according to the customer’s demands.
- An interesting and insightful perspective of the founder – “playing safe is safer in the short term, but riskier in the long term”
Seoul National University
When a startup is young, do not make the mistake of hiring too many people, 3-4 people is enough. However, finding the right people who are self-motivated may be a challenge.
Finotek
Finotek has taught me a few golden advices. Have endurance and to adopt a lifelong learning attitude.
BeNative
Company culture is very important. Hiring talents based on attitude first before looking at skills is essential to having a great company culture. The employees there presented themselves really well and this exuded professionalism with a hint of fun.
Memebox
TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK. "Just do it" and "This is the safest plan you have now"
SNU
In SNU, an entrepreneur shared that "having too many people doesn't mean the work done is better, workload will be lesser" I agree wholeheartedly and his company (Edu cast) is a good living example.
Finotek
Two things to takeaway it is to have foresight for the future and endurance is important.
BeNative
Flexibility is the key. Creating a comfortable company culture is important to ensure flexibility. The employees have reflected excellently on what the CEO has mentioned "attitude before skills"
Memebox
Cosmetics is also loved by males. Dino has made so much money through cosmetics and he values employees more than customers. He is such a rare CEO! Even more rare than the beef that I just ate!
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SNU
Learning Points
- Just like Startup Alliance and Google Campus @ Seoul. There are always opportunities available and many ways to kick start your ideas. Never be afraid to ask. There might be people who are willing to lend a hand.
- Start small. It is easier to manage and quality of product tend to be better.
Finotek
Learning Points
- Build a team based on trust and sincerity. It will go a long way.
- Think of solution or problems to solve based on the possible techs available in the future.
BeNative
Learning Points
- Trial-and-error together with perseverance is the key to success. BeNative had to approach companies and think of different ways to approach them in order to video interviews whereas companies now volunteer to be part of their interviews.
- Start with where you have the most resources available. Resources such as knowledge, funding or contacts.
- Continous learning attitude will help companies to grow.
Memebox
Learning Points
- Take risk which you are comfortable with.
- Team which you start with is the most important.
- Not all losses are bad. Memebox's investment in China is still growing. In fact, it has experienced one of the highest growth as compared to other regions which Memebox operates in.
- Understand your core competences. It help define the company. Memebox in this case is a tech company instead of a beauty company.
1. SNU
So today we went SNU and found out a few things about a startup founder named Park. I think whatever he shared is very real and relevant to us as students. Although it was easy for him to get funding, he splurged it all and failed many times. Despite the failures, he still managed to push on and he doesn't have any regrets but gained invaluable experiences through the setbacks. He found out that he helped people to achieve their dreams and ambitions and he realized how important good people are. I guess it's something you can't really learn from school and it's only through taking a risky decision will you gain something of of it. One main problem that he faced was retaining talents as SNU is full of smart people and they want the startups to grow really fast. I think the main reason why he started this Educast was because he took a lot of online lectures to get into college but there was no online education for him during his university period.
2. Finotek
2 main points that I took away:
1. 8 years ago, Finotek realized that there needn't need be a physical bank. Online banking services will suffice and no branch banks services will emerge. So you can see foresight for the future is very important - you can see what you can do for the future
2. Endurance is important
It may take a lot of time, more than what we expected. But if you persist, you will reap the benefits.
3. Be native
BeNative has came up with a reward based learning system which I think it's really smart because it'll incentivize people to learn. The CEO shared some of the philosophies he believe in:
1. Winning without fighting (孙子兵法) "All failed companies are the same: They failed to escape from competition." "Superior sales and distribution by itself can create a monopoly, even with no product differentiation- to building our own new territory."
2. Knowing potential competitor A strategy delineates a territory in which a company seeks to be unique.
Learning culture at BeNative- CEO is the test bed. He takes the risk and try to implement it in the office for the employees to test. It's important for a startup to always continue learning.
In conclusion, I think BeNative is a different language app because they cater to people who wants to learn business English. Moreover, the conduct interviews with real businessmen who are really successful. Thus, not only would users get to learn English, but also hear the insights from CEOs of big and small companies. It's a double whammy.
4. Memebox
Memebox started with $8k and they didn't have a lot of beauty experts. What they do for research is actually to index all the ingredients, consumer and products information for analytics prediction purposes. They are more of a data and engineering company. Their R&D is merging engineering with bio (aesthetics). Memebox also managed to raise $130 million.
They launch a new in-house product every Wednesday. They also came up with the idea of a dust proof cosmetic. The CEO mentioned something that stuck to me: "Exploration means it's riskier in the short term but in the long term, it's a safer bet. Exploitation is safer in the short term but riskier in long term." At Memebox, they don't make bets. The CEO also mentioned that only when the company is at risk, then it is doing really well. Even though their market in China is losing money, they are still spending 50% over their budget because China is growing really fast.
The CEO also said something that gave me a new perspective. "We're signing a campaign with a Korean celebrity at $4 million. To the US, it's a lot of money, but to the China market, it's very little." The China market is not only giving them the opportunity to make money but also giving them a new perspective. He said he never had the experience or DNA to have that view. China still has a long way to go on the consumer products market.
Also at Memebox, their number one is always the employees not the consumers. They value their employees more than consumers. This is something startups should takeaway because employees are really hard to retain and they are the core to their business.
SNU
I found the sharing session by Educast’s CEO very relatable. I was amazed and in awe of the facilities that SNU has as compared to universities back in Singapore. I like that the sharing was open and candid especially when he shared on how he took a leap of faith in taking a leave of absence from school and how he was willing to sacrifice grades for what he believed in. In addition, he was open in sharing his initial mistake of hiring too many people as he thought that it would complete the job faster.
Finotek
Finotek is a fintech company that innovate finance with confidence and truth in a new market. I like how the CEO shared many important and useful advice that young entrepreneurs should have. For example, he emphasized that endurance is important and one would need passion in what he/she is doing. He mentioned that technology will eventually die and wane off but passion is enduring. He also shared 2 important take away points, 1. Always think about what you want to do and the services you can provide. 2. Foresight for the future. These advice are useful as the startup journey is one that is filled with many challenges and obstacles. Especially when we are at a younger phase in life, it is easier for us to call it quits and take up a stable and full time job. I also found Finotek business concept very well thought of and it was clear that Finotek has also establish clear goals for the future.
BeNative
My 3 main take away points from BeNative is
1. It is important to know who your potential competitor.
It is easy to identify current competition. However, business changes very fast and it is important that to also identify and be aware of who your potential competitor could be in the next few years.
2. Time is an important entity
Everyone has 24 hours a day. How you are going to use it would eventually be crucial to the success of the company.
3. Using data to perform prediction is crucial
Understanding how to use the right tools to perform analysis on your data is important. A lot of companies have data but data is garbage if one does properly identify relevant analysis and tools to turn garbage into useful information.
MEMEBOX
I found it interesting that the CEO of MEMEBOX was a guy. His thoughts on how beauty could be better in another approach vs traditional approach of using beautiful looking models was what struck me the most (MEMEBOX used an ordinary girl next door as it’s spokesperson). However, I find MEMEBOX’s strategy in indexing every information available too extreme. This is especially so when he shared that employee work data is also being index. Personally, I felt it to be invasive and tend to suggest that the boss has a lack of trust in its employee.
SNU
SNU is the top university in Korea and is also known to be the "Harvard of Korea". Students here are really hardworking and smart. There's a incubator centre for students to have their own startup business.
The short introduction given by Mr Park, who started his business in Korea by providing online lessons was really heartwarming? Although he failed for the first time, this doesn't stop him. The current business was his second and he applied what he learnt from his first failure - not to have a big team at the start. This can be applied to any startups, because I agree that we should always start small and work our way up like Mr Park. The good thing is that with a small team we are able to see each others' strengths and weaknesses to work towards a common goal of building a company. With a small team we will be able to execute better communication, which is key to the common.
Personal experiences also can be an inspiration for startups, just like Mr Park. Based on your experiences, you will be able to understand the pains and needs that your audiences need. This allow you to provide a quality product that everyone will find it useful and use it.
Finotek
Finotek is a company that have creative vision to improve the social value and be a better world based on trust by endless efforts to make a lot of fun and happiness to clients. They hold the belief in the philosophy of trust and sincerely. The CEO emphasised that in order to go further forecasting is important. They provide 6 kinds of services such as ID Check Authenticity, Live Video Call, e-signature, e-valuation inquiry, e-documents and e-registration. These services made them to be the first mobile mortgage loan solution process on smart phones. It provides convenience to its client and banks because they can apply it on the go and it saves time. Each process can be done in less than 30 minutes which is what made them unique.
From the sharing, I found that the business model of the company is really different from other loan process application because they do not have to worry or handle the different laws and regulations in various countries if they were to go global. All they do is to sell there application to banks and use it. The regulations will be handled from there. Hence, they do not need to configure to each country's regulations separately.
BeNative
BeNative is founded in 2011 and aims to let their users to learn English from real business owners. The founder wanted to learn English and found the opportunity for global business because there's no company that provide such services. All of their content were done and owned by BeNative. All these interviews were done will real CEOs because people tend to trust them more. And the way they earn money is through advertisements from other companies and a portion of it will be used as cash rewards for the users.
I learnt that the company was able to identify their needs and strengths and work towards it. This also have helped them to be the dominant player in the industry. The CEO also shared with us the interesting ways of data collection done by them it was really enriching. I'm looking forward to using the application.
Memebox
Memebox is founded in February 2012 and operates in 5 other companies - Hong Kong, China, Korea(headquarter), Taiwan and USA. The CEO, started Memebox with just $8k USD and is able to build this it will 450 employees up to date. Although it is a beauty industry, is doesn't have many beauty experts, instead, it has lots of data and software engineers. He also shared that the brand managers do not decide on products but the data engineers do because they are the ones observing the transactions. Also, he felt that the employees were more important as compared to the customers. The internal employees must be confident and convinced each time there's a chance that's going to be push out soon.
SNU
Really, really huge university. You would need 30 minutes just to walk through the whole of the College of Engineering. The University has very nice facilities and the environment is simply amazing and extremely conducive for studying. It's just like walking through Gardens by the Bay.
Through the short student exchange, I understood the perceived competitive nature of SNU students. It is not how we imagined things to be. Yes, there are competitive students, but not all of them are like that. The students whom we met were among the elite, where they are part of this club called STEM. Usually within these clubs, what you see would be a system to groom the elites. But in this case, this program is designed for such students to contribute and give back to society, helping fellow friends along the way. This is a really meaningful program that helps to forge an inclusive school community, which I believe Singapore schools can learn from.
Also, I now have some new Korean friends! Yay!
Finotek
It wasn't clear at first that Finotek's solution was an API that could be integrated into existing mobile banking platforms. When this was clear, I realised that this is a very smart model. Selling the API to banks for their integration into their existing mobile apps eliminates many problems that may pose as a threat towards their globalisation. They no longer have to worry about the different regulations in different countries, all they need to do is to provide consulting support.
It may sound unbelievable that a 3-day process for mortgage loan application could be turned into a 30-minute process. But in order to convince their clients, it was very smart of them to demonstrate to banks the as-is versus the to-be business process, eliminating the skepticism they may face.
"Today you will see a lot of technologies, but they are not important. Passion is more important." - Mr. Kim Woo-Sup, CEO, Finotek
BeNative, SMATOOS, Inc.
They have an extremely useful solution in place. This seems to be a platform where anyone could easily pick up useful English phrases to be used in the right context with the right enunciation. This is what I feel really makes them stand on an island of their own, apart from just the entry barrier that they have set up due to the tedious interview process.
The CEO, Mr. Alan Kim, gave an interesting introduction to data science. It gave me a broader perspective as to how data science can be applied in the EduTech, which I have never really spend time thinking about.
I can't wait to try out CashEnglish too!
MEMEBOX
Mr. Dino gave me an impression that MEMEBOX has a very strong technical team, based on the fact that the business revolves around the data engineers, which was unique in itself.
What intrigued me was him preferring starting up with his friends. This seems to be opposite in Singapore, where you would commonly hear people saying not to embark on a startup with your friends, with the mindset that you may lose your friends in the process. Now that I think about it, it could be a much more enjoyable process if you had your own group of friends with a similar vision and dream working on a startup together. By enjoying what you're doing, success should soon follow.
It was also interesting that he puts his employees before his customers. This is a concept that we would not see often, but works, and I have personally experienced it during my internship. Similarly, if you have employees who enjoy themselves at work and believe in what they're doing, you have happy employees, and success will follow.
Seoul National University
”Help people to succeed with you by succeeding their own dream”
I am fortunate to be able to visit the best university in Seoul and made a number of new friends from there while conversing with them over lunch!
While we were at the SNU incubator building, Park, the founder of Educast shared with us his journey of building up his company. He also shared with us the mistakes that he has made along the way and gave us advices if we ever want to start up our own business. Here are some mistakes: 1. Do not hire a lot of people when you 1st started your business. 3-4 will be sufficient and sometimes, it is easier to work with lesser people. 2. It is hard to find someone who is self-motivated and professional 3. Education sector has a lot of regulation
I do agree with him that it is a bad idea to have too many people in a team when you 1st start up your business. People usually has this mindset that “by having more people = more resources, it will be more beneficial to the company in terms of getting work done”
Anyway, I am glad to hear that he has managed to overcome all these challenges. His current goal is to enter into the Japanese market before the Western companies and hope to be better than them.
Finotek
It's all about the sincerity & trust
Creating a mortage loan offline (at a bank) is a very complex process. Not only that, it usually takes an approximately 3 days to get it settled. Finotek aims to change it to become more efficient. Through the technology that they have created, online bank can loan money to people in a short period of time and the process will be completed within 30 minutes. From 3 days to 30 minutes, reducing 78% of fees and hold 83% of market share in Korea is something that is extremely impressive!!! The CEO of Finotek, Kim Woo-Sup, emphasizes a lot on sincerity and trust. That is how he runs his company. Given that the company has so much passion in what they are doing and is currently earning 4.36 billion won, I must say that I believe that they will achieve their goal and make it to the global market.
BeNative
”All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape from competition”
Ed-tech is founded by Alan Moonsoo Kim in 2011. The reason why this company was established was based on the needs of the founder – wanting to learn English. Ed-tech built an application – “benative pro” that help users to learn business expression from top business people around the world (e.g. Facebook, Google). When they 1st started this company, they had a hard time trying to work with CEOs as they are constantly being rejected time and time again. However, this does not stop them from trying. They kept trying again and again. They managed to get contracts from various companies and now, companies will come to them and wanting to get featured in their application. What differentiate them from their competitors is that a lot of the content cannot be found anywhere else as they get real content from the companies and they also have lectures that are made by employees from native to educate the learners on the meaning/how to use the word. They are even willing to travel to the other end of the world to get people who really know business to teach and what is best is that they do not only constraint themselves to MNCs but they also encourage SMEs to participate in this.
What inspire me the most is that everyone in the company is constantly upgrading themselves by picking up new skills and improve themselves. I feel that this is a mindset that everyone should have.
Memebox
” Every company should be self driven. Don’t try to find a perfect fit in your team”
What can I say about memebox? IT’S A BEAUTY COMPANY (although they are more of a data engineering company)!!!!! I feel that Dino, the CEO of memebox, has a different mentality from all the CEOs of the other companies that we have visited. 1) try to make money 2) serve / build the community phase 3) change the industry - how to index the data? Launch a new product every Wednesday 4) impact on the humanity (e.g. work with lab. Come out with dust proof. Prevent dust from entering your skin. >>> WOW!)
I love how he is such a risk taker & someday, I hope I’ll be as daring as him too. On a side note, I CAN’T WAIT FOR THEIR STORE IN SINGAPORE!!!!
SNU
My experience in Seoul National University was great. The talk by Mr Park, -- has inspired me to be a entrepreneur in the future, or even as a student for now. However, based on what he has mentioned, hiring of employees is not an easy task. We have to find the right employees with the right skills and trust in order to be successful. But we must take note that having too many employees for a startup might incapacitate the finance of the company. Therefore, we must consider our needs carefully.
We were given a warm welcome from the students from the College of Engineering. Korean students are very friendly and smiling always! Through our small chat with them, I found that Korean education is similar in many fields. And I think I am much more fortunate to be in a bilingual education system, and English as our main language. After all, my experience was great and enjoyable with them.
Finotek
Kim Woo-Sup, the CEO of Finotek quoted 'Technology is not as important as passion'. Mr Kim has shown his great interest and passion in Fintech which I believe leads to the success of Finotek. Also, working with the bank will have strict legal and regulation. He also empathises a lot on trust and respect. We should learn and follow his belief in order to be success.
BeNative
I find it interesting to be able to learn english from VIP such as CEO of Facebook, Twitter and etc. The team contains many different nationally which i find it very interesting. I hope I would have a chance to work with different nationality in the future and learn more about different culture
MEMEBOX
Mr Dino, the CEO of Memebox has an interesting background and different belief. He prioritised his employees to the customers. He conducted mobile apps testing on the employee, which is quite different from many other companies (test user usually from the customers). Apparently, it works well and the mobile apps rolled out well into the market. From this, I have learnt that there are many ways of doing things and does not necessary have to follow the convention ways.
