Weekly VentureSquare Stories are summaries of some of the week’s top posts relating to the Korean startup and venture Industry.
Last weekend CEO of TVEXCITING Jong-bum Lee, headed down to Daejeon to check out the “Startup Weekend” event. Here is an account of some of his activities.
I recently attended “Startup Weekend” in Daejeon and met a lot of good people and had a lot of good experiences. I think others who are also passionate will definitely take something away from the event, even if you’re a student or an experienced entrepreneur. This is already the sixth Startup Weekend at KAIST. With the support of designers, planners, developers and other all-rounders, it was a productive event aimed producing results for the teams involved. On the first day Enswers CEO Kim Kil-yeon and Tik-tok’s CEO Kim Changha shared their experiences about startups.
A time was then allowed for those who had applied to pitch their idea within a short space of 100 seconds. After the pitches, volunteers would enter the teams they wanted. I also pitched an idea about a Christian social network called Rainbow Prayer but didn’t manage to build a team. I joined a team with Waple Store CEO Jo Ji-hun who had the idea for a fashion curating service. I was interested, having previously attempted a style matching service when I ran an online shopping mall. However, due to too many people being in the team a few of us moved to other teams.
Our team which was called ‘Delivered’ was made up of a developer, a designer, two planners and myself. At first we used a Flipboard type service as a benchmark and to differentiate it, decided to mix it with the idea of Delicious — but since the name “Deliboard” sounded a bit awkward we went with Delivered. Our concept was personalizing news. We used a simple algorithm which analyzed which categories were viewed by the user the most. In order to reduce the amount of wasted time when trying to view the news, users can select how much time they have and the right amount of news that can be consumed in that time is delivered to the user. When the set time is up, the user gets a notification so they can keep tabs on themselves.
Finally it was time to introduce our product and be judged on our efforts of the last three days. The day before, David lee from Seoul Space gave a lecture about startups. He talked about things one needs to know about startups and I specifically remember him mentioning words like, faster, cheaper, smaller and scale fast. But on the final day, David Lee’s team was in a panic state! Due to a communication problem a Japanese developer and designer had suddenly packed up and gone. What’s worse, they took the server which meant they lost all their work! I got to experience a startup in proper crisis mode.
Here are the winners. The top award went to “Reflecty” which helped communication between hair stylists and customers. Second place went to “Fashion People”, a fashion curation app and the participation award went to “Koko Book” team who made a second-hand book matching service and app. After everything was over everyone got together for dinner and we finished up.
While participating in the 2 night and 3 day event I felt and learned a lot. More than anything, I felt that the skills and knowledge of developers and designers is important but the most important thing is the actual people. Now that even three people can easily found a startup, people have become more important. Of course being with the best is important but I felt that spending time seated at desks, sleeping in the same room, discussing ideas in the sauna etc. really helped us get to know one another and that maybe this is what determines whether a startup is successful or not.
The seventh Startup Weekend will be held at Seoul University in May. I really recommend anyone interested in startups to go along. See you then!
View photos of the event at the original post here.
Foodfly Helps Businesses Deliver
Former Gangnam restaurateur Seo Jae-wan founded ‘Foodfly’, a company which has been offering a delivery service and internet site ordering system for a while now. Foodfly, which also received capital from Ticket Monster co-founder Shin Seong-yoon, recently recruited a new CEO and COO to accelerate the company — Lim Eun-seon who worked as a strategy consultant for Deloitte Consulting and Ko Hyeh-gyeon who worked overseas in Samsung Electronics wireless division. Lim talked about the companies goals,
“Foodfly offers delivery, internet and mobile services for the 40 trillion won net worth of restaurants who do not or cannot deliver. Our goal is to grow together as a platform, together with the owners of many restaurants.”
Stonebridge CEO Kim Il-hwan said “Korea is one of the few fields in which Korea can benchmark for the whole world.” He added that Stonebridge expects that Foodfly will create a variety of choices in the delivered food market. Despite achieving great success on opening in August last year, Foodfly currently offers a restricted beta service in ten suburbs in Gangnam and is being used in approximately 50 businesses affiliated with major companies such as CJ Foodville and LG OurHome.
True Story (Season 1) is an opinion mining service (OMS) which allows users to view information, discussion, opinions and patterns about Korean politicians in great detail on one page. As the first of two major elections this year approaches, politics will definitely take a huge precedence in both the news and people’s minds. The site is made by Saltlux and sources news, blogs and social media channel to display the information. On the front page are a list of the most “popular” politicians of the month and clicking on anything of them will bring up a detailed profile of their presence on the internet and what search terms they are most often associated with. Other details are organized into graphs, lists and maps. According to the website, “Season 2” of True Story will be released in May but are keeping a lid what the new section is.
South Korean Websites to Stop Collecting ID Numbers
As of August this year, Korean sites will no longer be able to collect national security numbers after the announcement of a new law by the Korea Communication Commission. Any ID numbers already collected will also have to be destroyed within a period of two years. Read more about the new law and the reason behind it here.
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