“I’m sorry I didn’t know.”
Real cockroaches are abhorrent, but these start-up cockroaches need to breed more and spread far abroad. ^^
According to the interview, there are many records of trial and error that start-ups have to ponder. (The text is a link to the comments.)
Reading the failures and success stories of the past, it feels like I’ve watched all the mini-series episodes that have been aired for more than 10 years at once.
- The company is an old start-up that has been established for 14 years. The two CEOs spent much longer struggling to survive since their foundation.
- The first service that the two representatives started was a influencer marketing platform called Add by Me. It was natural that the ambitious young man in his 20s received 500 million won in investment as soon as he started his business.
- “I did everything I couldn’t do as a startup.” Advocate has 10 employees and 7 board members. A company that has not established itself in Korea has entered the U.S. and Japan at the same time, saying it received investment. “All I can do is make mistakes, and I spent four years being hit with my body, and I got to pivot.”
- Advamy turned into a service called ‘cookie’. The business model was not clear, so I did not receive investment. Eventually, I had to end the service only taking on debt.
- “The reality of not creating a sustainable business was so shocking and frightening.” It was the word ‘customer obsession’ that caught the two representatives at this time. The philosophy is not to be conscious of competitors or to focus on technology, but to be obsessed with solving customer needs.
- Under the philosophy of Customer Driven, a service called WorkInSight emerged. It detects the customer’s location and movement by detecting the signal on the customer’s smartphone. The service based on the customer’s needs was also well received. However, this service also experienced frustration. We collected and analyzed the device values of smartphones, and Apple blocked them.
- Important customer inquiries were received, but after two to three days without being aware of them, I frequently found out. Channel Talk emerged as a result.
- Channel Talk has escaped the cockroach of Teheran-ro. ARR has surpassed 36 billion won (31 million U.S. dollars) and the number of customers has surpassed 160,000. Channel Talk has sent more than 5 million messages a month, and 98 percent of customers continue to use Channel Talk without leaving. Voice calls have also exceeded 1.55 million minutes (1,000 days). Currently, more than 25 percent of sales are made in Japan. It has secured a total of 16,000 companies as customers.