Needless to say, at beLAUNCH2013, the Korean startup VCNC was showered with praises from the CEO of Evernote, Phil Libin. I got the opportunity to conduct a follow-up interview with Jake Park, the 29-year-old CEO of VCNC, a successful startup that created the app for couples, ‘Between’.

Jake has a certain composed magnetism about him that makes him incredibly compelling both as a CEO and as a person. He graduated from Seoul National University majoring in Business Administration and had “only just found out about the startup ecosystem when [he] was 23”. His dream was to enhance the quality of life of the people in the society through an IT product or service he developed. He was working at a company at that time and was thinking about getting a MBA or working at one of the big Korean conglomerate companies, but chose startups as his career path. 

VCNC is a relatively young startup – but is one of the most successful ones in Korea. It was established around “2.5 years ago” but developed incredibly fast. VCNC started out with 5 co-founders, now they have more than 20 people on their team including a Japan office. As for their expansion to Japan, they are ‘just starting’ and are planning an extensive marketing strategy targeting female Japanese university students. His next plan after Korea and Japan is SE Asia. 

But Jake is not satisfied or thinks of the startup as quite ‘successful’ yet. He described himself as ‘fortunate’ to have such great team of people who are inspired by one purpose. 

Edward K. Lee, the Value Innovator for VCNC said that Jake is a “great team builder”, which he believes is “one of the most important virtues that a CEO/Founder should have”.

“I’ve been counting the number of heads in our office, and I think every member the right person in the right position. And if a member is going through some hiccups, Jake is great at sensing their needs and helping them to do the thing they feel most passionate about, which in the long term helps our company grow,” Edward began.

He continued: “[Jake] himself also adapts well to the position that our company needs him to be in, whether it is product development, business development, investment relations, marketing etc. We still have a long way to go, however, his leadership and insight has also guided our team/company to grow fast up to this stage.”

When I enquired whether there have been any changes in how they work, Edward replied: “there have been some changes in how we work inside of VCNC. When I first joined as the first employee, everything was shared by just shouting and gathering the guys in a couple of seconds. But, this is not the case right now. We have bigger teams and branches out of the country. So, we’re developing our own process to make smoother discussions between teams. This is important because we should be sharing the same vision and aligning our steps to where we are heading. And so far, I think the process is going well.”

Edward and I both believe that this is because of the trust and respect that exists within the company. Members at VCNC are incredibly passionate about what they do. 

“We’ve been seeing each other work and as I have been observing the characteristics of our members, and we have our own initiative in what we do and also have high standards in whatever we’re up to. I think this built a foundation of trust inside VCNC. So when there is a task, we trust the person/people in charge of it. Even if he/she doesn’t nail it the first time, we eventually know that he/she will.”

One thing that Jake said stayed with me for a long time even long after I conducted the interview. He said: “You have to be sure about the reasons why you’re starting a startup. You need to think about what effect it will have in the society.” 

Startups In Korea: Her Perspective

“This is actually my first trip to Korea,” she began, before we moved on to talking about the strengths and weaknesses of startups in Korea. What caught her eye? She liked Aircast.me the best, amongst many other promising startups (I’ll be publishing an article on them, so watch this space!). At beLAUNCH2013, Gwen had so much spirit and her bubbly personality shone through all throughout the interview. She is extremely talented, previously having been a partner at Thymos Capital. She is one of the Board of Advisors for the Singapore Innovation & Productivity Institute and for Social Media Week 2013, and is a Worldwide Judge for Imagine Cup, Microsoft’s premier student tech competition.

In our discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of startups in Korea, Gwen mentioned that she was “surprised that some of them could not even name US competitors”.

Now this is a big, big, big problem. This is perhaps it is the most common trait of Korean startups. At consultancy meetings that EICG/beSUCCESS did with Korean startups, I also found that startups who were so focused on ‘going global’ (usually, this means the US) failed to have any solid grasp on the US market, failed to name US competitors when asked, and held on to the idea of ‘thinking globally’. Conducting a SWOT analysis would be one of the first intelligence tasks for a startup would be to gain competitive advantage by gaining market awareness and competitor capabilities. “The whole team should have a solid market and competitor awareness. It’s not just about the CEO.” Gwen added.

In defense of Korean startups, one might say that that ‘dreaming big’ is important for startups. I do not agree with that as such. Sure, there is no excuse in 2013 not to think globally, and startups do not suffer from a monopolistically competitive market as such. But having unrealistic expectations (e.g. instant user growth) doesn’t help anybody.

Going Global Is General: What It’s Actually About

“Going global is actually very general. In Korea, there are only 50 million people – so it’s still quite small. When people talk about ‘going global’, it’s about picking a bigger market to play in.” So it’s not about ‘learning English’, because you could be targeting the Chinese market, or the South East Asian market. In fact, that is the ‘tried and true’ method for Korean startups to go to Japan, then South East Asia, before going to China and the US, because they are such huge markets. Again, going global is actually about picking a bigger market to play in, not the biggest market to play in.

Going back to Gwen’s point, this is why specifying the business objective and identifying internal and external factors of the startup will be absolutely essential before jumping into ‘learning English’ and building bridges with people.

Cross promotion always proved to be a major factor in successfully bringing together (and expanding to) foreign markets. At the Memebox/beSUCCESS collaboration event, Charles Huang (co-creator of worldwide hit game Guitar Hero) famously said that “for every Psy, there’s an MC hammer wanting to break into each other’s market”.

Korea’s Unique Strengths

There are so many startups “trying to do things” – many other people around the world face similar issues as Korea. But then Gwen raised one interesting point that perhaps only a non-Korean would be able to see very clearly. The advent of the mobile age has opened up the possibility for Korea to compete on a global stage and develop Internet products in parallel with the rest of the world – if not better.

I asked her to clarify what she meant by that: why is Korea so special, and why should that be relevant to startups here or startups wanting to expand to Korea?

She continued: “[Korea is unique] because number one, the whole infrastructure is very high. Even when you’re mountain tracking, you get 3G. That is amazing! Koreans are unique in that they are super high connected, wherever you are. That is an incredible, incredible advantage to this country because the world is currently moving towards the direction of having connectivity everywhere, albeit at a rather slow pace. If Koreans are living in this semi-future reality, you can build a whole market for it and be ready ‘when the wave hits’.”

Keyword for 2013

For Gwen and many others, the keyword for 2013 is “Internet of Things”. Another word is “connecting”.

She concluded: “you have to be active, and have to be open about sharing others’ perspectives…. So the next big project for the Korean startup ecosystem is [about] bringing people together – beLAUNCH2013 is so well done, and there’s a lot of energy here. It’s the second time it’s been held, right? I really think it will be able to grow quite a lot. I’m really looking forward to it.”

*Special thanks goes out to Justin C. Yu, who so kindly helped me with conducting speaker interviews at beLAUNCH2013.

LatteScreen Launches in 14 Countries Across Asia, Europe and North America: The First Incentivizing Mobile Advertising Platform on Smartphone Lock Screen.

Jeong Soohwan, CEO of AppDisco (http://eng.adlatte.com/), the market leader in reward-based mobile advertising scene, announces the launch of LatteScreen in 12 countries in addition to its current operations in Korea and Japan. On May 13th, the product will be released in six countries including Australia, UK, Taiwan, Spain, Malaysia and Vietnam. The service will also be available in Hong Kong, Italy, Germany, France, Thailand and US by the end of May.

In February, LatteScreen was first launched in Korea and Japan; it marked the inception of the very first reward-based mobile advertising platform that utilizes the lock screen on smartphone devices. During the trial period with its beta version, it reached two million downloads in the two countries combined, exhibiting the potential of the service.

LatteScreen incentivizes users for permitting and engaging in ads on their lock screen. The application has a very simple interface that gives the users the options of swiping a tab to the left or right, which unlocks the screen or leads to further details about the advertisement. The simplicity and convenience of LatteScreen guarantees satisfactory user experience. It also provides a variety of contents with photography and illustrations to meet users’ desire for wallpaper design. In addition, the registration process was simplified for the global release, allowing users to sign up simply with an e-mail address.

LatteScreen incorporates a more neutral way of bringing advertisements to users as the lock screen placement and design are less obtrusive. It offers full size advertisement images, helping advertisers reinforce their brand image in a novel manner. LatteScreen gives out higher rewards to users who engage in activities such as installing an app, fulfilling the demand and interest of both the users and advertisers.

Through the launch of LatteScreen overseas, AppDisco embarks on its ambitious journey to become the major incentivizing mobile advertising platform company in the global market. According to Yoo Bumryung, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of AppDisco, “Based on the potential growth of the mobile advertising market, this user friendly application will satisfy users who are not familiar with the usage of mobile applications with its simple user interface and the benefit of rewards. We see this as the key to gain positive response from the global market.” Also, AppDisco is working towards establishing branch offices, or alternatively, attain partnerships in each country to optimize sales and marketing strategies.

The CEO added, “We have been preparing this global launch sincerely and punctually. I believe that the expertise we gained from pioneering the Korean & Japanese markets over the past few years will be of huge help in successfully launching LatteScreen overseas.” He continued, “With the global launch, we will do our best to be the start of borderless mobile business and to be the global bridge that connects our users with the global network.”

About AppDisco

AppDisco, headquartered in Seoul, South Korea, is a trendy, creative business venture that strives to give users a new and fun experience through its products: AdLatte and LatteScreen. These two applications are AppDisco’s representative services that are leading the mobile advertising industry in Korea. With unique ideas and passionate approach, AdLatte and LatteScreen aim to help people understand the paradigm shift from web to mobile by developing original contents for smartphone and tab devices.

Currently, AdLatte is Korea’s number one reward-based mobile advertising application with over eight million downloads in Korea and Japan. In February and April, LatteScreen launched with its beta version in the two countries and hit two million downloads. AppDisco is providing performance based advertising services that allow advertisers to mark their market and see instant results. While advertisers can target their customers, users can also choose the advertisement of their choice and get rewarded!

For further information check www.eng.adlatte.com or http://www.facebook.com/appdisco.global

Disclaimer: The information in this press release thereto, is strictly confidential and may be legally privilege.

AppDisco Global PR Manager: Lyla Jeong
E lyla@adlatte.com
T +82 70 4658 4724
M +82 10 6816 0302

On the Asian market in general

To him, what was most interesting was the penetration of mobile and broadband in Korea. He mentioned that the market for mobile app services in Korea is huge, and so some of the prominent Korean services will eventually make it to the US. So: there’s a lot of potential here. But the Chinese market is huge – so big that it is enough for those outside of Asia can solely concentrate on it alone. Korea is a small country. This means that the company can only grow to a certain size. During the chat Jeff highlighted that Korean startups need to “understand the domestic market, leverage what we have here (the broadband, the mobile first) and leverage it with a global approach”.

On US startups expanding to Asia

When I told him that I was at the Pre-Disrupt party in NY earlier on this year, and how I found it interesting that the US startups are not too excited about expanding to Asia (but Asian startups seem eager to expand to the US). This is of course because American startups want to be well-grounded in their own country first, before moving on to others. This will take at least 3-4 years. He also told me that “typically US entrepreneurs will know that if they are successful they will try rule the world. If they can, they will manage and scale to owning the US first (First target). Once they’ve done that successfully they will expand to Europe or Asia. Doing both is usually hard. It’s really rare. If they go to Asia, They will go to Japan, Korea, Taiwan – before going to China, because China is too huge. As for Europe, the beach-head will be in the UK because we speak the same language. It’s easy. Then they will expand to other parts of Europe. That’s the ‘tried and true’ way of doing things.” (He gave us an interesting example of Fab.com – we will be writing another article on this, so watch this space.)

On having a global outlook

Having a global outlook is important, obviously. But Jeff raised two interesting issues that I never thought of. In SV, failure is more generally accepted, which is different from most cultures around the world. On that point, he also added nobody can blame you for failing (because it was either too risky or your goal was too high), but the fact that there is still no radical innovation being done does not change. There is some creative innovation around already existing platforms, but “there is nothing at the moment that will fundamentally change the world and save people’s lives.”

We talked about why he invested in Shakr, what kind of person Shakr’s founder David Lee is, and his take on “the next big thing” for Shakr Media.

What stood out from the discussion I had with Shakr’s first angel investor, is the conviction Shakr has for doing the right thing. The entire team is passionate about its work, producing beautiful videos for our lives. Weddings, babies, and everything in between. As a startup that has worked hard to establish deep relationships with some of Korea’s most influential executives and startup founders, they’ve had access to short-term projects that could have produced early revenue. But they turned and walked away from a number of those projects, so they could focus their energies on building Shakr.com. Shakr’s unwavering commitment to the long game sets it apart from most startups that we hear about, not just in Korea, but in the world.

On being Shakr’s first investor

As Shakr’s first investor, Andrew made his decision based on nothing more than a slide deck and a meeting with Shakr’s founder. “He showed me a slide deck. Among a dozen slides, just one stuck out – and that part of Shakr hasn’t changed,” according to Andrew. “David founded Shakr to reimagine content, make it move. Make it move people.” Clearly, David and Andrew clicked on Shakr’s mission, and it set the groundwork for a very fast closing on Shakr’s first angel investment.

On tough decisions and being a family-friendly business

When Shakr began applying its technology to family-related content, they started to get approached with a number of partnership opportunities. But Andrew Kim points out that David was “really focused on building the right relationships with the right partners, to curate the way Shakr connects with the people whose lives it would touch with video.” He further added that, “David always prioritizes keeping the Shakr brand associated with feelings around family. That was one very important thing that we did as a company.” At times, this was difficult – as a hungry startup, offers with dollar signs attached were very tempting, easy ways to put money in the bank. But Shakr held true to its values, and disregarded short-term gain for building long-term partnerships with the right brands.

On David as a startup CEO

As our conversation shifted to Shakr CEO David Lee himself, Andrew didn’t hesitate to shower him with praise. “You see him as somebody that energizes you,” begins Andrew. “Actually, when I put money in this company, I told him that I’m sticking with him, in both good times and bad times. Because he has a very charismatic force… but he genuinely respects people. People respect him for that. David is consistent and very trustworthy – he’s the same person in and out.”

In my own conversation with Shakr’s founder earlier in the day, what stuck out was David’s genuine thankfulness for the great people around him and the good fortune he has had to meet them, in response to the praise he was receiving all around for a great presentation.

On the next big thing for Shakr

“We have a great target audience. Shakr has clarity about who its customers are and how we can add value to them. It’s beautiful video – high production value video, or the Hollywood treatment – for your life, something that was out of reach until recently. So that’s great for now. But our next step? Our next step is to take this to a global level. And we know we can do that because we have clarity of focus on family as our customers, and because Shakr is already a team of very global people.”

I had the privilege of interviewing David Lee, Founder & CEO of Shakr Media at beLAUNCH 2013. We asked him about Korean startups, the ecosystem, Shakr’s goals and about David himself.

Sue J. Hur: Thank you for making the time for this interview David! Justin, this is David Lee, the Founder and CEO of what I can confidently say is the ‘next big thing’ – Shakr Media.

David Lee: Nice to meet you Sue and Justin, I’m David Lee, one of many. (laughs)

Sue: Now, I saw your presentation – it was absolutely amazing! It was conducted completely in English, a language you’re comfortable with apart from Korean. Now, my question is: do you see Shakr as a ‘Korean’ Startup?

David: We’re definitely made ‘in’ Korea and ‘of’ Korea. But the definition of a ‘Korean’ startup must not apply because the barriers just don’t apply anymore. If we perceive ourselves as strictly ‘Korean’, that’s going to be a problem. In our case at Shakr Media, we don’t look at ourselves as a Korean startup at all. As for the presentation – I think I’m really really really bad at presentations.

Sue: No way.

David: Yes, I’m bad at it! But yesterday was different for me because it was talking about what we’ve been doing for the past years and so there was nothing scripted about it. I was talking about what we think about and do everyday. What we live everyday at Shakr.

Sue: I see. You’re very passionate about your work! I’m sure many startups in Korea look up to Shakr. How is going global important for these startups?

David: Going outside of Korea is very important. At first glance, our market is a niche and it’s a niche that exists mainly in Korea. (For now!) Korean people all create beautiful videos for baby’s first birthdays and weddings. The personal event video space can be so much more though, encompassing everything from cradle to grave. And we want to touch the hearts of the people outside of Korea. We want to capture not only the specific milestones and events of a child’s life but we want to translate the entire life cycle using Shakr. We want to capture those moments that make and define a child’s life. This is beautiful and powerful. There’s a lot of work that goes into making a high-quality video and Shakr solves that problem. Afterwards, we’re thinking about opening up our own platform. In the future, professional motion graphics designers and directors would be able to just upload and post their video styles using Shakr, making them available for anyone to customize with their own life story.

Sue: Now that’s amazing. Was that Shakr’s goal in the first place at the initial stage?

David: Our work changed over time. We take the idea of ‘fail fast’ very seriously. We’re very very firm with ourselves about acknowledging failure internally. We had no specific product idea in the beginning, only the theme ‘Reimagine Everything’. Shakr reimagines content to video. We initially turned Space Magazine, published by Korea’s most culturally significant architecture firm, into an iPad app that plays magazine content for you in video form. We achieved 90,000 unique viewers. But we realized that it wasn’t something scalable. We realized that this isn’t for us. So we shut down that project and we started doing something else – but that didn’t make our hearts move either. Then we tried Shakr using our personal life content, photos and video clips of our families. We could feel our hearts beat a little faster. That made us smile.

Sue: That’s interesting. The theme in itself is abstract and it’s about emotions – but you’re also very business-minded and realistic. At the same time, people know you as someone wholehearted and genuine. How does that happen?

David: We’re selfish in a way. Using Shakr’s technology to transform our personal photos and video clips into beautiful Hollywood-grade videos, it makes us happy. We want to make ourselves happy, so this is what we do. Because if our work makes us happy as our own customers, we know that we can spread the same happiness to other people. That’s why, despite the long hours and the challenges of bringing life to a startup, we can get through it all with a smile. It’s fun doing this. It makes us happy! We go through it all, the good times and the bad times, and every single one of us at Shakr derives immense satisfaction from it.

Sue: I see! So your team is obviously very close-knitted and share a common goal. David, I’m going to ask you a rather direct question: what’s the hardest thing for a CEO?

David: That would depend on the person because all of us have different aptitudes, different deficiencies. And I’ve got a lot of those! Fortunately, I’ve got it good because of the wonderful people around me. With the right people around, being a startup CEO gets a lot easier. So to answer your question, I would say that the hardest thing is to, at any given time, in any given situation, make whatever the hardest thing may be irrelevant by having the right people around.

Sue: You also received a lot of attention from overseas. 

David: A little bit. But there’s a lot more to come. Thus far we’ve been fortunate. We raised some money from a fantastic team at 500 Startups. 500 Startups packs a ton of intelligence, depth and sincerity into even the briefest of meetings. And I’ll let you in on a secret… Dave McClure at 500 Startups is a really nice guy! We also raised money from a Mountain View based Googler, John Lagerling. I’ve got a ton of respect for him. Smart, fair, accomplished. He gets things done at a world-changing level in his job at Google, but still stays accessible to startups. How does he do it?

Sue: Right. Now, last question: how important is Korea? 

David: Well, I come from a town in Toronto, so coming to Korea – well, Seoul is huge. It’s so fast-paced and energetic. It just strikes me. The change in the mindset is should be a cultural shift that takes a long time. But in Korea, it just happens. It’s very exciting t be here and it was one of the best things that happened in my life. It’s a lot of fun and we’re definitely in the right place. 

Justin: Are you thinking about going global?

David: I’d like to address the question itself. We’re not going global. We are global. That is an assumption that needs to be addressed in the first place. There’s a lot of dialogue about Korean startups trying to go global. But engaging in that conversation is underestimating ourselves, selling ourselves short. Seoul is an incredibly metropolitan city with global taste, in tune with global trends and setting global trends. There’s a new generation of entrepreneurs here who are already in tune with the world. Let’s spend less energy debating how we can be more global, so we can embrace what we already are. There is a very meaningful list of startups small and large that are globally significant. On one end of the spectrum, there is Kakao, which is quite Korean but has incredible global significance. Anipang, which is very Korean, is a globally significant phenomenon because of its unbelievable distribution and monetization. Industry and cultural leaders from around the world are looking at us already, asking “how can we be like those incredible Koreans?” We are global now.

Sue: I see! Well, thank you David once again for sparing the time to do this interview with us!

David: Thank you Sue & Justin!

The moderator of the session was Jay Eum, Co-CEO of Translink Capital and the panellists were Saeju Jeong, CEO of Noom, Christine Tsai, Partner of 500Startups, Soujanya Bhumkar, CEO of CoolIris and Chang Kim, CEO of Tapas Media

Three of the panellists – Saeju, Soujanya and Chang, have started companies in Silicon Valley and New York, and Christine is a partner is a leading  global early stage investor 500 startups.

Below are excerpts from the panel discussion.

What is the big deal about Silicon Valley?

Saeju: I had no idea about Silicon Valley even after we received the funding. When I travelled there for the next round, I felt like Silicon Valley was A-Z one stop shop – I could meet investors, media, business partners, simply everybody!

Soujanya: Silicon Valley is more like a state of mind, the risk of trying of what we believe in is much less than cost of not trying it at all and feeling even more stupid after somebody else pursues it.

Christine:  Just like actors want to go to Hollywood, all the entrepreneurs want to go to Silicon Valley, the ecosystem is so developed, you can get access to the right people, and to capital. I don’t say that there are no successful players in the other markets, depends what your goals are.

Chang: the most striking thing was the density of the founders, or the people who are involved in the startup ecosystem.

What are the criteria to come to Silicon Valley?

Soujanya: You need to focus on the talent acquisition if you haven’t launched your product yet. We were 8 full time and 14 interns from University, not for cost reasons, but they brought some awesome ideas and student energy.

Second, capital: investors are very open in Silicon Valley, be shameless, you are going to get your meeting, and if you have your product they will email you instead of you emailing them.

What are some of the best practices according to you?
When you see all the startup pitches what are the parts appealing to you? ( Addressed to Christine )

Christine: We expect that entrepreneur has a product not just a business plan. What stands out is the team and the passion, clear plan for clear product and clear customer. Lot of it goes back to founders; some of the good ones are hackers building a product, for them building a team and raising capital are difficult. Those who can do the latter stand out.

Chang: Growing a thick skin and being shameless while fundraising is important. Being Korean everybody is afraid to lose their face, but this is not important. Your English and appearance are not that important, your product is more important.

Jay: Most of the investors can sense in 10 min if the product is engaging enough,  instead of just a presentation, show the product, stats and show your impact

Saeju: Believe in yourself, in your team and your product and enjoy it every single day and you will create an amazing vibe, it can create a aura about you and everybody will be interested in you.

What do you spend most of your time on? (Question from the audience)

Chang: Sometimes i have time only for product, sometimes only meetings

Saujanyaa: Balancing between today and tomorrow, you need to find out by yourself

Saeju: It is about priorities

- Andrea Bajnokova and Vallabh Rao

Winners of the different categories:

1. Amazon Web Service Winner:

JDLab

Sue J. Hur: Hi Sirgoo, thank you for taking the time to do this interview with us. This will be a great opportunity for Korean startups and entrepreneurs. 

Vallabh Rao: Yes, thank you so much for sparing the time for us. 

Sirgoo Lee:  Thank you.

Sue: Phil Libin said that it’s dangerous for Korean startups to think and see themselves as a ‘Korean’ startup, because once you want to o global, you cannot build barriers around yourself. When Kakao first started, did you see yourself as a Korean startup? Did you want to go global in the first place? 

Sirgoo: I think that mobile apps are, in nature, global products because when you launch it on Google Apps or whatever, everyone knows about it. But there was no ‘success model’ from Korea. There were a few companies that tried being global – for example, there was ‘Cyworld’ in Korea. They thought it was really easy to take that service and launch it in the US – but it doesn’t work that way. You really have to think about how your service can be tailored to an individual. I’m not sure if there is such a thing as an ‘international culture’ but it’s difficult to separate yourself from being ‘Korean’. It’s reflected. 

Vallabh: Can you give us some examples where your bias is reflected in our decisions? 

Sirgoo: I’ll tell you about an experience I had with my former company – we acquired a Chinese company and we looked at the design. It was very poorly designed in that it was text-heavy and everything was in red. So we changed it to have less text and changed the design and the color scheme. And people started leaving. Chinese people want dense text, the color red. It’s not solely about the design, either. It could be about the functions that is foreign to others. For example, Koreans have a concept of ‘minihome’ (in Cyworld). That can be seen as too girly for others. As for KakaoTalk, our dream in March 2010 was to have 100 million users. Now we’re up to 80 and 90. 

Sue: Do you have any specific advice for Korean startups? 

Sirgoo: If you can come up with a very good service, you can succeed. What points do you want to secure for your users? You can have a variety of ways to package your service as a global product. Things have gotten better than 10 years ago. There are a lot of companies that want to help you go global. Go to events and conferences such as beLAUNCH and see what they’re like. 

Vallabh: What worked for KakaoTalk? 

Sirgoo: We never actually marketed KakaoTalk overseas – we suspect that Koreans living overseas imported it. There is some independent growth overseas however. We need to analyze the data and see how everything worked. So for example, the market in the Middle East really liked the ‘group chat’ feature. We’re learning as we go and although we have no ‘reference points’ as such, but to keep a competitive edge we have to try different things.

Sue: I suspect you get asked this question about Line, Joyn, WeChat, (Vallabh: and now Hike from India!) – what do you think about all these new services coming in to play? 

Sirgoo: We try not to focus on the others. We’re concerned about what our customers want, what our clients like. Receiving feedback from our customers is very important to us and that is the main focus. Reflecting their needs as quickly as possible is what we’re about. If you keep eyeballing others, that wouldn’t be so good.

Vallabh: But there is a huge market, you would agree.

Sirgoo: There is a huge market, but the thing is that people download a couple of apps to try and see what they’re like. So, in the end it’s about what they like. Optimizing that to the customers’ needs is important.

Sue: So you hope to expand globally one day?

Sirgoo: Yes, hopefully, one day! (laughs) 

Sue: Thank you Sirgoo again for spending time with us. It’s great to have you here at beLAUNCH2013! 

Sirgoo: Thank you Sue & Vallabh!