Transcript: How to build a startup in the UK and in South Korea – Alice Chan | FITS Podcast #3

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The mics are on and we are on.

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Okay, just double checking my hair isn’t sticking up in weird angles or anything.

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Oh, you look awesome.

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Okay, thank you.

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Don’t worry about that.

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Thank you, Dimitri.

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Very kind.

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Okay, so let’s just start a very cozy conversation.

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I can cut out the parts that are not okay.

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I usually do.

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So it’s totally fine.

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Feel comfortable.

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I mean, you do feel comfortable.

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Obviously, you’re a quite confident woman.

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So, yeah, let’s just start with…

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I mean, could you please just give your background?

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What did you do?

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Because you’re quite an interesting person.

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You have such a diversified background with…

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You’re Chinese, but you grew up in the UK, and that’s already a lot to tell.

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So just how do you view yourself?

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How do you think you are?

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That’s a great question to start.

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Okay, so, yeah, it is quite rare, as you say.

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Being British-born as well and being in Korea, looking Asian and not being from here,

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it’s not often you come across somebody like that.

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But, yeah, so I have to say, so I grew up in England and born and raised in London,

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and pretty much grew up in a very Asian Chinese household

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and then went to university doing internet engineering.

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So I thought that’s what I really wanted to pursue because I think I was 16 at the time,

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and I saw my cousin coding in HTML, and she was making her own website,

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and I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

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So I guess that could be the relation to tech.

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But for me, I felt as though it was just magical, you know,

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writing in a notepad with some text then magically transformed into a web page.

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And that, to me, was very fascinating.

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So I decided to go to university and study internet engineering.

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At the time, it was called Multimedia and Internet Systems Engineering,

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so a very long name.

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But I did computer programming and a bit of artificial intelligence

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and a bunch of other things engineering-related,

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and it ended up being very, very hard.

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It was very challenging for me, and I didn’t enjoy it very much.

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I thought I would enjoy it a lot more.

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So when I graduated, I decided I didn’t want to be a computer programmer,

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even though that would have earned me a lot more money than I ended up earning.

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But I ended up falling into marketing because I worked for a startup,

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and I stumbled across it being, you know, fresh out of university.

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I didn’t know anything about what my career should look like

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or kind of red flags, green flags to look for when it comes to looking for a job.

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So I just accepted the first job I got, and it was at a fashion magazine,

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which was online.

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It was an online blog, and so I became their marketing assistant.

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And so I did three years there and then somehow fell into affiliate marketing.

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And then I ended up with a job at one of the biggest media agencies in the world,

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based in London.

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So I was very lucky to have gotten that job

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because I really wasn’t qualified, I think, at the time.

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And then did two years there, and then I worked for a fashion company called All Saints,

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which came from the UK.

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It’s a British fashion brand. It’s all over the world as well.

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And it felt very cool doing that job because it was a job that people,

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a lot of people wanted to do. So I felt like I had achieved a lot at that point in my life.

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I had an apartment in London. I had parties every weekend, and I had a good job.

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But for some reason, I still didn’t feel fulfilled.

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And I think I came to the realization one summer when I felt very, as I said,

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just not content with life. And I thought on paper I had everything.

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So one day I got this inspiration, and that summer my grandma actually passed away,

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and she lived till 98, so she had a great life.

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I ended up just thinking I want to just tick off something off my to-do list,

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my bucket list, sorry. I wanted to really travel the world.

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So I thought about that Sunday afternoon, and ended up on Monday morning quitting my job.

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And then just buying a one-way ticket, and I flew to Southeast Asia,

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and I backpacked for seven months on my own. Having at that point never been camping before,

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I’d never traveled on my own, I’d never done anything like it.

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And the whole time I’d been a city girl, and then suddenly I turned into this girl

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with just a backpack of belongings on her back, and that’s all I had for seven months.

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So a pretty drastic life decision, I would say.

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I am not someone that really thinks things through properly when it comes to big decisions, I think,

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which is a good and a bad thing. I wasn’t really fearful,

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and so I made a huge life decision to just pause everything in London,

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and give up this really good job, and I went to Southeast Asia, I traveled seven countries.

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It was amazing, it changed my life, and I really, really recommend it to anyone.

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At that point in my career, I’d already worked for a while, and I wanted a break.

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So anyway, long story short, I got a lot of inspiration from kind of traveling different countries.

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I saw that there were so many different cultures out there that I had no idea about.

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And growing up in London, I was exposed to a lot of cultures,

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but at the same time, London life is just the same, pretty much, if you have a certain lifestyle there.

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So I was so inspired, I came back and started my own business with my sister.

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That was a Korean culture subscription box.

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And at that time, we were very early to the market.

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It was a product that some people wanted, and a lot of people did want,

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but it was something that people weren’t willing to pay for just yet.

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And so we ran that for six years. It was a very interesting time,

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and it won us a place on the accelerator program called Techstars, which is quite well known.

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They have programs in like 40 cities all over the world, and they were just starting in Korea.

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So during the pandemic in 2020, we managed to win a place on Techstars.

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And so I managed to get out of lockdown in London and fly to Korea

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and come here to do the accelerator program, but I ended up never leaving.

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So I’ve been here almost four years now because of that initial, you know, being accepted onto that program.

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It changed my life again and ended up staying here, running my business,

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and ended up not working out in terms of my business and the longevity of it.

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But it was an incredible six years. I learned so much.

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And then I decided to utilize my knowledge as a foreigner and my startup experience

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to then work for other startups in Korea and help them understand the global market a bit better.

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So I position myself in that way, have had a few roles since then in Korea.

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But my baby and my business has been the biggest sort of learning curve of my life, I would say.

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Those six years were very long and very well spent, I would say.

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And I have a lot of wisdoms because of it. So I wouldn’t change a thing.

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But yeah, that was a very long introduction, but that’s who I am.

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That’s how I view myself, I guess. And that’s how I introduce myself to other people, albeit a bit long-winded.

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But hopefully that gave you a little bit of insight.

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No, that’s amazing because I have so many questions right now.

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I’m ready, Dimitri. I’m ready.

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I have so many that at some point I started reciting them to just not forget them.

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But I think I forgot a couple from the beginning.

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But it’s really like, where do I start?

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Well, first of all, I think let’s start from the end.

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You said your baby, your startup. Did you really mean a baby?

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No, no. My only baby in life has been my business.

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I didn’t know she had a child.

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I refer to my business as my baby a lot. And it does sound strange, I hope you realize.

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She just wanted to clear it out.

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Yeah, that’s great. That’s awesome. And now I understand.

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I mean, certainly from that introduction, I got to understand you a bit more about why you were successful.

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And looking a bit forward, I think your ability to pivot in life,

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your ability to actually change the course of your life and influence it,

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I think that’s the most powerful ability that you have to be successful with startups

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because startups are really about pivoting, about finding your way, finding your niche.

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And you’re really great at finding your niche, as I see from your introduction.

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And the first thing that came to my mind when I thought that, oh, she’s great at finding her niche,

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was why, maybe that’s kind of a service for the IT community, IT members who are watching,

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but just out of respect to what they are doing and everything.

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I wanted to refer to that decision of yours when you decided that you didn’t want to pursue internet engineering anymore

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and decided to pivot for the… I think it was one of the first pivots in your career, right,

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to actually graduate with that degree and then say, I don’t want to do it.

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So what was the backbone of this decision? What exactly did you… What did you offer?

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What did you offer, let’s say?

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That is a great question. And I think it is not to be downplayed how investing three years of your life to study a degree

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and then literally throwing it all away and doing something completely different could be viewed as such a…

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It’s such a massive waste. It is in a lot of ways.

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I think for me, it was… It comes back to what I said earlier, which is that I don’t think I fully…

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I don’t process fear in terms of making a big life decision in the same way as a lot of other people.

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I tend to make snap decisions based on intuition, which is definitely could be as bad of a thing as it could be good.

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And so I chose to study Internet engineering because of my cousin just coding HTML in front of me and me being fascinated.

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I didn’t do any research into what it would have… what it included.

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And so I signed up onto a course that essentially what it needed as a prerequisite was A-level physics and A-level mathematics, which I didn’t do.

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I did A-level biology, business studies, sociology and psychology, which are very different subjects.

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And I did not have any A-level mathematics knowledge whatsoever.

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I graduated with, I think it was a B in GCSE maths, which is when you’re 16, you do GCSEs.

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And I was never good at maths and I did not know I enrolled on a course that required such a high level of mathematics.

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So I remember very distinctly when I got to university, very first semester, very first lesson,

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the lecturer in front of me was writing differentiation and integration, something on the board.

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And I remember thinking, I have no idea what this is.

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And I remember he was talking about binary ones and zeros.

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And it was the first ever time I’d heard of such a thing.

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And everyone was acting like this is ABCs.

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And I thought, oh, no, what have I gotten myself into?

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And so it turned out that degree somehow accidentally accepted people onto the course that didn’t have the prerequisites.

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And so I was one of those people.

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So for the next three years, I felt like the biggest imposter.

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I suffered greatly when it came to all of my homework, all of my tuitions.

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Everything felt like I was, you know, when you’re running a marathon and everyone’s like five miles ahead of you or 10 miles ahead of you and you’re only just getting started.

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That’s what I felt like.

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So by the time I finished, I managed to graduate and, you know, and everything.

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But I felt as though I’m done being an imposter. I need to find something else.

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And so I decided to look for a job in something else.

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And I think at the time it was content editor.

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That was the role at the startup. And I didn’t know it was a startup.

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I think they advertise themselves as an established company.

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And I also knew nothing about startups at that time.

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I was like 20 or 21. So the startup then ended up enabling me to pivot some more.

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I pivoted about 10 times in that company just because I was working next to the CEO and whatever he wanted.

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I did. So I did affiliates. I did a bit of like write creative writing and I managed to team and then I put together some parties.

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I was just whatever he needed me to be. So I think pivoting. Yeah, it came early on in my life for sure.

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That’s no, that’s impressive that you decided to.

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I mean, you decided to go through this degree that you thought that you didn’t deserve in some way.

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And also after that, you decided to pivot, like not be an imposter, as you said.

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And for some people that is unthinkable because being an imposter is all they know.

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And, you know, I know, I know people like that. I’ve met them and they know how to how to be an imposter so well that it kind of becomes their true nature.

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You know, being an imposter always all the time, you know, fake it till you make it mentality.

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I think this mentality is quite prominent among especially IT and software because I see across across the globe in different parts of the world.

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They complain about IT specialists. You know, even in Russia, I read a lot of Russian posts about that.

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They complain HR managers complain about IT specialists, software developers lying about their jobs, about their experiences and education on their resume.

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And I think it’s like quite prominent among them, among like different specialists.

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Yeah, but among IT in particular to be an imposter, to always pretend that you know more and then learn on the fly and then go with it.

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Because I think the essence of IT is one of the, like, let’s say characteristics of IT is that people don’t know what other people are doing.

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Most of the time it’s like, oh, yeah, I’m on the back end. I know what you’re doing on the front end, but I’m not as proficient as you are.

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So it creates a lot of like people like tower of knowledge kind of people who are the only person at the start of who know what they’re doing.

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And that’s why people pretend like they prefer to fake things and get into the position where they gain power and then become the tower of knowledge who actually knows things, how things work or maybe doesn’t.

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Other people don’t know either. So I think it’s like quite important for you to be like, I’m quite impressed with you being honest with yourself because on paper you have degree, on paper you have everything to be this specialist in that field.

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And it takes a lot of gut and a lot of moral principles to actually say, no, I will not do that because that’s not who I am. That’s not what I like. So that’s great. That’s actually quite impressive.

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And yeah, I think you speak to a lot of truth just because, as you say, the IT and tech specialists, they’re specialists, right? They seem like experts.

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You go to them thinking that they know much more than you. And I think that there’s this really funny TV show, by the way, just random tangent called the IT crowd.

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I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it, but it’s a British TV show about the IT sort of stereotype and how they’re treated and, you know, how people perceive them.

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I think it’s hilarious. So I always thought, though, just going back to what you said, is that I always felt insecure about myself because I’ve done so many different things, because I’ve pivoted so many times that I’m not an expert in anything.

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Like I’ve never considered myself an expert in anything. And so I get insecure around people who have done just one thing their whole lives because they’ve dedicated all their time to that craft and they know everything that there is to know as much as it can be possible.

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But for me, I’ve just tried so many things and I’m just this jack of all trades, but master of none. So I guess, you know, and I think your previous podcast episode, someone talked about being insecure or not being secure enough.

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I think we all struggle with that, whether you’re an expert or not expert. I think that, yeah, we all have some imposter syndrome to a certain degree, right?

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Right, we do. And one more question I had about your introduction part, because it was so, I would say, I don’t know how to describe it. It was so wholesome and also quite broad about yourself.

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I didn’t know most of the details. I mean, we didn’t talk about your past, obviously, but also I didn’t expect many of the details to be like that. And like, what would you say were the most important skills that you took from job to job, from one sector to another sector, and that kept you alive and thriving in all of your positions?

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What would you say like the to the skill set? Right, yeah, I think that I can probably divide it up pre-entrepreneur to post-entrepreneur, because they’re very different chapters.

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Pre-entrepreneur definitely was a pretty green corporate kind of employee, someone who’s just had a few years experience and doing marketing. Honestly, marketing is not rocket science. Anyone can do rock marketing.

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Yeah, I mean, you can learn on the job. And so I remember very distinctly, this is a very weird fact, but I’m not trying to show off, but I think every interview I’ve had, I’ve either gotten the job or I’ve been told that it was very good and I should wait a bit longer for the job opening to come up or something to do with there be a referral or something.

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So essentially, I think I figured out that I was good at interviewing quite early on. And I think it has to do with, I mean, I wasn’t that confident in all of my interviews, I definitely struggle with confidence, especially early in my early years.

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So I think it had to do with genuineness and potentially likeability. My CV having engineering on it really helped though, I must admit, I think that that really impressed people just looking at your CV.

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And then the other thing was being able to answer interview questions well. I think that even if you might not be the best candidate, I think having a good likable attitude and a professional, timely response to the interview process, but also turning up and looking like you’re ready to do the job.

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I think that really helped. Because I did marketing, it ended up transferring quite well for the pre-entrepreneur part. And I’d say post-entrepreneur, my journey, I think being a startup founder really gets you quite far as well. It just sounds cool, I think.

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And also the various elements you have to deal with when being a founder means that you are someone who is very malleable and reliable and creating your own business is not easy. So proving that you’ve done that and proving some sort of traction usually gets you some level of attention and some level of respect.

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So I think showing that you can do that really does garner a lot of, it can garner opportunities for yourself. And I think that definitely relating to people and networking is another really big thing.

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Knowing the right people, getting that warm introduction really helps as well. So, yeah, I can’t honestly say it was down to one thing. If I look back and join the dots, I think it was a mixture of all of these things and luck for me.

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I didn’t really have a strategy going into it. I just kind of did it. So it’s very interesting you asked me because now I’m reflecting on all of this and I’m like, yeah, well, okay.

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I got to where I am now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Great.

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Well, jumping on to the part where you said that you started traveling and experiencing new things for the first time in your life and doing it as if you were an experienced traveler, that actually is fascinating because I think, again, it proves that you are able to pivot, you’re able to adapt, you’re able to, yeah, just to know exactly what you want.

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Even though it’s something that wasn’t in your paradigm before, like completely out of your scope of interests. So my question was, if there was one takeaway from the travels, what would that be?

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Yeah, there were so many takeaways. I mean, seven months doesn’t sound like a long time, but every week, I would say every day, every week, every month, I started to peel back the layers of who I thought I was and was morphing into a new person as that journey went on.

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I know that sounds so poetic. It’s very Eat, Pray, Love. It’s very Julia Roberts. But it is awesome. It is, you know, it’s a cliche, but at the same time, it’s very true that if you put yourself outside of your comfort zone, and if you

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broaden your horizon, and also a bit of solitude sprinkled in there, and meeting tons of new people in new settings can really stretch your, you know, horizon as a person and can really bring you to new reflections and introspections about yourself.

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So I would say the main takeaway, I think, was the thing that stayed with me the longest was, it always pays to conquer your fear. And what I mean by that is that, you know, we have a lot of fears inside of us that are limiting us to do things that are beyond, as you say, beyond your scope, beyond your paradigm.

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And who I became on my travels was someone I never would have dreamed I could become. So I’ll give you a few examples. You know, my first month was the hardest month because I’d lived my whole life in London, you know, everything is, you know, a certain type of way.

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It’s very, it’s very, you know, comfortable. It’s convenient. It’s, it’s where I grew up. There isn’t a lot of discomfort in London for me.

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And so when I was in Thailand, I remember this very clearly, I had never shared a room with anybody before up until this point, I’d never been camping, as I mentioned. So I was sharing a hostel room with about 10 other people.

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And it was mixed men and women. And I had never experienced so many sounds so many smells, so many, you know, fears of someone’s going to steal my passport or who’s this weird guy stumbling at 3am like drunk.

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There was lots of things that I was very, very scared about, but I met the best people on that trip, I can count, you know, so many international friends I have living in different places all over the world because I met them through my backpacking travels that I would see again in a heartbeat, you know, and, and then another example of how I conquered my fear was, I have this massive phobia of open water.

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So I’ve never swum in the sea before up until this point. And I just, I’m not very adventurous when it comes to sports or water sports or anything. But on a random whim decided to get a scuba diving license in Thailand. And so I went to this island called Koh Tao, did a three and a half day scuba diving course.

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And at the time, again, like my engineering degree, I thought it was going to be a good idea. But then by the time I put on all the gear and we were tight, it was time to finally descend into the ocean because we train a practice in a swimming pool. I started to get a panic attack because I realized we were really finally going down into the depths of the ocean.

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And I could see the rope going down and we were supposed to hold on to the rope and go down bit by bit and equalize the pressure in our ears and stuff. And I could see everyone else doing it. No problem. And I just thought, no, no, no, I can’t. I can’t do this.

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I actually can’t. So I asked to go back up. I couldn’t breathe. You know, I just had that panic attack. And then my teacher was super kind. She said, look, take a break, go back on the boat and think about it. If you really want to do it, I’ll come down with you again. I’ll do it again with you. But I’ll take these guys down first.

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So I went back up on the boat and I thought to myself, look, firstly, you’re such a failure, Alice. You’ve made it this far, traveled all the way to Thailand and you’re not going to do this really cool activity. At the same time, the fear was so real. I felt it in my chest. It was so heavy.

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But I saw how everyone else was doing it and I thought, what’s so different about them? I could be like them. And so I just gave myself a pep talk on that boat. I think it must have been 20 minutes.

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They came back up and I said, I want to go down. Can you come down with me again to the teacher? So she said, yeah, of course, let’s go down. And so the second time I had to breathe, like really, really regulate my breathing. I had to tell myself, Alice, you can do this. You can do this.

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I was like coaching myself, giving myself a pep talk. And I basically just somehow forced myself to go down there. And once I was down there, man, the ocean is beautiful.

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So I was seeing all these gorgeous fishes swimming by me and it was just unbelievable scenery. And I just forgot about my fear completely. And I came back up and I had such a high because I was like, I actually did it. I did it.

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And then getting the license and doing, I think it was three more dives, finally cemented that I could get over this fear, this amazingly crushing fear that I had just three days ago, I became a different person.

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So I think that was something I experienced quite early on in my travels. That was during the first month. After that, I just kept referring back to that moment that if I came across something fearful again, and there was many things, you know, riding a motorbike in Thailand or

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climbing mountains in Vietnam, I don’t know, like there were so many things. I just went back to that moment and thought, you know, it’s not that bad. Like you can get over it. And once you do, you’ll feel like you’ve just broken new limits and you’ll feel like a new person.

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And so I do think, yeah, sometimes life gives you these lessons. And if you’re able to get through it, then, you know, you can be very surprised with yourself.

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And that was definitely one of the highlights of my podcasting experience, I’d say. The whole description of you overcoming your fears. It’s so familiar to me because I have this crippling fear of heights.

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I went to the UK and that’s like a funny, that’s a funny story because you come from the UK and I conquered my fear of coming to the UK too. I went there and I was in eighth grade, I was 15.

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And I had this crippling fear of heights and everything like higher than two meters was basically too high for me. I couldn’t really like, you know, walk by the edge or of anything, any surface that was, you know, lifted up.

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I was there and we were staying at some kind of like school outside of London, somewhere in the country. And at the school, they had these facilities, you know, with where people, where children could play.

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And there was this high, like, really tall tower, like basically just a log, like a tall log, like about maybe, maybe seven to 10 meters, like tall.

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But for me, it was insurmountable. But people were climbing that with just one rope attached to them, you know, for safety. And for me, that wasn’t enough at all. I didn’t feel like secure doing that. I didn’t feel safe.

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And I was shaking there. I was shaking. I was sweating. Even girls did that. Everyone did that. I was like, I’m shaking. I don’t know if I can do it.

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And there was this guy who was, you know, the overseer of the group. And he said, you know, man, it’s fine. It’s okay. We like any group has this one person who cannot do it. It’s okay. And I’m like, well, no, actually, it’s not okay.

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I don’t want to be the one person. And I want to make this group the only group probably like that doesn’t have this person. So I just went up, climbed it and had this kind of euphoria that you described too, you know, euphoria of overcoming your fear.

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Like I can do anything. And it was pretty chilly, you know, the UK, it was in November. So it was quite chilly. But when I came down, I didn’t feel anything. Didn’t feel any temperature, anything. I was just like, I’m still chasing this kind of, you know, feeling that I felt back then.

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But the first time is just amazing. Like it’s inexplicable how, like how it opens your horizons. And I think like your experience is just awesome.

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It’s awesome. It’s like one of the things that I think I will remember for life, like the experience of a person who is afraid of depth, but went to the depth to the ocean, not depth, like open ocean, but you went to the open ocean.

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And I think it’s that is maybe a cornerstone of your success. If I can guess, I can get like make us make an assumption that yet. That’s probably why you are successful with your startups, because you overcome your fear every time.

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Right? Like probably like in everyday life, you also have some fears that you overcome. And as you mentioned, this one skill to overcome your fear is so essential for you. And startups are basically that, right? Overcoming your fear, overcoming your fear that, well, if I invest money and it doesn’t work out, then I’m basically I’m losing money.

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Right. And that’s a fear. So what are the types of kinds of fear or maybe examples of fear that you overcame during your startup career? Like when at the point of inception of a startup, you definitely had something going on in your mind and soul. Right.

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So what was that kind of maybe anxiety, maybe something that you overcame and you remember distinctly?

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Yeah, I think for sure. You’re absolutely right. I mean, startups are so risky and fear is in so many places. And you know, every decision you make, there is something that you could lose.

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And I think for me, you know, I think to preface this, I’m introverted. So I may not appear it. A lot of people don’t think I am. But my MBTI is INTP. And so when I did the MBTI test, I think like six, seven years ago, I was about 80% introverted.

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And I’m now I did it recently again, and I’m about 62% introverted. So I’ve actually decreased my introvertedness over time because I’ve kept putting myself back in this baptism of fire of meeting people, connecting with people, networking, as I mentioned earlier.

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I really do think my entrepreneurial journey has taught me one thing, which is networking is super important. And so through lots of reasons, tech stars being one of them, I had to put myself out there, but it was never easy from the beginning.

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And I think one thing that gave me a lot of anxiety, and I think when you mentioned the word anxiety, I think that’s what really brought up the memory for me why it was so fearful was that I didn’t, I felt very uncomfortable in other people’s presence.

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I when I had to represent my business, and as I mentioned earlier, like quote unquote, being the expert. When you have your own business, you’re meant to be the expert of your own business. And there is a certain perception that you need to uphold, which is that you you should know your business inside out, you should know all your numbers, you should know how to pitch your business, you should know how to sell yourself how to sell your business.

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And so, you know, and I think that it’s not always easy from the beginning because everyone starts somewhere, and beginner entrepreneurs won’t have all of those skill sets right off the bat.

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So for me, I felt it was very uncomfortable when I was put in certain situations where I had to present my business, like pitching, for example, presentations or speaking to mentors and trying to pitch your business to a partner potential partner. Those situations may be very anxious because I was always

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perceiving and assuming that they would ask me questions I wouldn’t know the answer to and then I would look really stupid and then and then they wouldn’t give me any credibility and then they won’t believe in us.

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So I think I placed a lot of pressure on myself. And I think looking back now, we need to give more grace to ourselves at that moment, especially if you’re just starting out because you really won’t have everything honed from the beginning.

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But we can try we can definitely put more effort and I definitely think a podcast like this, other resources out there can help you understand what the journey of an entrepreneur could be like, and arming yourself with tons of resources around, you know, how to write a great pitch deck

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how to, you know, hone your presentation skills, how to have better conversational skills, how to hold yourself in a professional meeting. Those are all very different aspects of learning, but is necessary because you will need to use those skills at some point, and it would be good to hone it as sort of as quickly as possible because then you’ll make the most of opportunities, but definitely understand that it’s a work in progress.

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And for me that took years. You know, I say I ran my business for six years. It was really three, at least three or four of those years, I wasn’t good at those things. And that was mostly because I stayed at home in London where we worked, we worked from home.

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We didn’t make any effort with networking at that time, because we were both my sister and I who ran the business together we were co founders and co CEOs, we were both introverted and we’re both so introverted she’s even more introverted than I was maybe she was 90% introverted which is just a terrible combination

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overall, because I do think CEOs, the more successful ones tend to be extroverted, because they are natural around other people they get lots of energy from people therefore they can handle way more meetings and we can’t avoid the fact that you know to be a successful startup, you do have to connect

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with people you do have to make those exactly and so I do think that there is a whole theory that I have that introverted CEO struggle a lot more, and I would love to, you know, delve into that more later, you know, in my career I would love to dedicate more time to that

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for me, that was one of my biggest fears, and it took a lot of honing and a lot of being around people a lot of pitching a lot of practice before I then cracked it, you know, and even even now I do get nervous for lots of things if I’m a panel speaker or some somebody that

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you know people are going to be listening to me lots of eyes on me yeah for sure we’ll get nervous and, and that’s very normal but yeah I think that that did give me a lot of anxiety from the beginning and I had to work really hard on working on that.

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That, yeah you described a lot of, you know, that took you a lot of work, definitely to overcome this anxiety. And I think it’s very common among people who are introverted, and especially like mon it community as well.

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Generally, when you see someone pitching for IT startup, they are so anxious, and they’re like so paranoid about stuff which other people have no idea about so like I’ve seen people, you know, learn by heart the API calls that they’re using or some other you know

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technical details of their startups, but more generally people, investors and other people who are, you know, stakeholders, they don’t care about that stuff. So, I think this is along with practice along with like daily overcoming, overcoming things and hurdles daily

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on a daily basis. It’s also quite important to understand something like internally, you know, on a more high level that nobody cares, you know, in the beginning nobody cares about you, and you make them care about you.

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So why would you worry too much about pitching, and that that for me, right, like, I’m not a startup founder but definitely like works with you know, connecting with people networking, even organizing something like foreign IT and tech specialist group in Korea.

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Like why worry so much if I’m just appealing trying to appeal to a group of people who I didn’t know who didn’t know me yet, but they will know me and I will make them care about what I’m doing, you know, just by doing it.

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So that helps me a lot personally like to get in terms with you know like when you’re sitting there and just decided whether to invite someone or not, or whether to organize an event or not.

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And I just say fuck it, you know, like, people don’t care. So I don’t care, like right now, just as they do you know kind of homogenize myself with them, adopt their stance and say you know there is a guy who just posted some bullshit events on his group so who cares.

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And you know when I see that with my eyes like, oh yeah, actually people wouldn’t care that much and then I posted and then people care I’m actually excited even more. So it’s kind of like, not downplaying my expectations but adopting their stance and thinking from their perspective.

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So, like, what’s this internal thing like for you like this understanding because obviously when you practice things yes you do get over some fears but this fundamental understanding that allowed you to completely overcome, or maybe like not completely overcome but like, you know, significantly

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reduce this anxiety and fear, like this internal understanding or principle, do you use empathy or do you use just you know like fuck it mentality, or was that was a secret to start a founder.

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That’s, yeah, that’s definitely a big question.

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I think for me, the turning point came at the fourth year when we won the place on the accelerator program so everything changed from that point onwards. Prior to that we were just struggling founders at home in our living room trying to make things work.

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And I would say we got a lot of ground doing that because the first three months of our business, going up and running, we actually got so many emails from people all over the world. At first we delivered just to the UK, our Korean culture boxes, and we got quite a lot of demand coming in,

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which signaled to us that there was some product market fit that was happening elsewhere, and we opened up international shipping, and that just suddenly boomed like we were delivering to 510 15 countries within the first few months.

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That shocked us, you know we weren’t expecting such a thing.

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But other than that you know gaining that momentum slowly bit by bit, we were really still just two sisters working in our living room at home. We had no other foundation anywhere else we had no partners supporting us we try to just do everything ourselves and I’d say that we definitely put

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so much work in for quite a little output when it came to comparing it to the later years. So once we won a place on Techstars we had to fly to Korea.

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We joined a cohort of nine other companies, and we had the first month of the three month program which is, you know, the first month is about mentor meeting mentors and it’s called mentor madness. And the second month is about once you’ve picked your mentors, then honing your, your pitch deck and honing your business model and getting as much mentorship as possible and accelerating your business.

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And then the third month is about the demo day and getting ready for being in front of investors and pitching yourself.

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So the first month was the most pivotal month because we were, we were pushed into this massive discomfort zone where we had to meet 100 mentors in a month.

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And that meant that we went from being super shy introverts, hermit in a shell, no one to ever speak to us we didn’t want to speak to anybody, sadly, to suddenly being put in front of 100 people in a month.

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And that was only mentors, it didn’t include anybody else from the program it didn’t include having meetings of our own, and other people that people the mentors introduced us to.

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So I’d say probably 200 people let’s say we met in one month that’s that’s 10 people per day you know at least so you know, counting just weekdays, but that month made us feel so exhausted and so uncomfortable and so pushed to our limits that we could barely

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control it we were like, it felt like running a marathon every single day we could barely conjure up the energy because we were usually used to spending all of our energy just to ourselves and suddenly sharing it with everyone else meant that we were spread to the thinnest

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we’ve ever spread. However, we learned so much during that month that that was the most accelerated process for us as as entrepreneurs as founders.

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That was the most in that month. And it was the most invaluable experience ever.

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There’s no money that I think I could have spent to get that same experience, other than winning a place on that accelerator program. And so we were connected with the smartest most inspiring most relevant people in the industry who gave up 2030 minutes of their time

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for free to talk to us and try to give us as much advice as possible. Not only did I learn so much from these people, but we ended up opening all these doors to other opportunities other partnerships, other potential mentors and just making tons of friends and networks

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in just a short space of time just one month. And that I would say was the foundation for the secret success secret recipe for success as you said, because we started to compound our network and suddenly like 100 times 1000 times our net worth in terms of the network.

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We then realized that their opportunities are limitless, and that we can connect to, you know, the kind of like power of the network and the degrees of separation became much smaller because Korea is pretty small when it comes to the entrepreneurial world.

303
00:41:41,000 –> 00:41:57,000
And so we then started connecting with big connectors which then connected us to other people and so it became a kind of the start of the high of networking for me. I now see as a way to sort of gamify myself in a way.

304
00:41:57,000 –> 00:42:11,000
I like to try to maximize every networking opportunity I try to connect as many cool people as possible. I just think there’s no end to it. I just want to keep meeting cool people keep having inspiring conversations because it can only be a game for me.

305
00:42:11,000 –> 00:42:27,000
And try to obviously offer value and stuff like that. So, for me, it was about starting to interact with people that were in business and doing cool things. And over that time, learn who I am and learn the art of engaging with people in a meaningful way.

306
00:42:27,000 –> 00:42:46,000
And that is, you know how to build a genuine connection, how to offer value to someone, how to, you know, attract someone that could offer value to you in a way that makes sense for them, you know the reciprocal reciprocal effect I guess it could be called, which is you offering value and someone offers you value back.

307
00:42:46,000 –> 00:42:59,000
It’s a great potential partnership. So, for me it was about learning the art of that, and that is very powerful when it comes to entrepreneurship because this is how you unlock opportunity and this is how you get to the next level.

308
00:42:59,000 –> 00:43:09,000
So in my opinion, yes that that part was was the, the biggest sort of baseline for the jump off point I guess to when things changed.

309
00:43:09,000 –> 00:43:21,000
And you just gained, you gained so much just from talking to people I think you can learn so much just from having a conversation with someone that is in a different field to you or same field but you know different stage.

310
00:43:21,000 –> 00:43:30,000
I think it’s always a good idea to broaden your horizons in that way. So for me I think that would be the foundation of it all.

311
00:43:30,000 –> 00:43:47,000
It relates to, I see a lot of connection here and I kept thinking while you were talking like about what’s, there are three types of people, according to Malcolm Gladwell, he’s booked the tipping point, have you read it?

312
00:43:47,000 –> 00:43:51,000
I have yes, but please remind me I forget a lot of it.

313
00:43:51,000 –> 00:44:04,000
There are three types of people who make something viral, but I think that applies to startup a lot too, because startup is essentially something that like small and went a little bit viral or like viral, really viral.

314
00:44:04,000 –> 00:44:26,000
So he says that some, like the people who make things go viral and go over this tipping point where something was completely unknown to something that was known, it’s the first type is connectors, the second type is mavens, and the third type is marketers.

315
00:44:26,000 –> 00:44:41,000
So connectors are people who connect people and I think I myself am connector. I just remember a lot about people. I like to know people, I like to give them opportunity to talk and even in events I just try to give stage to people, like connect them actually.

316
00:44:41,000 –> 00:44:53,000
Maybe it’s not that important for me to introduce myself compared to other people introducing themselves to each other and me being just there, giving them an opportunity to talk.

317
00:44:53,000 –> 00:45:04,000
So I think of myself as a connector. I know a lot of people, I know what they’re doing, so I can connect them and like I have seen a lot of you know proof of that trait of mine.

318
00:45:04,000 –> 00:45:32,000
But I’m wondering what type of person are you because mavens are more people who like know things in depth, so they know exactly where to get, let’s say the best table, or what’s the best price for this hotel, or you know like what’s the best price for everything or some you know other characteristics of things, so they know where to get the best items, like essentially.

319
00:45:32,000 –> 00:45:45,000
And marketers are people who I don’t remember exactly but I think it’s just yeah just speaks for itself like marketer, so they go and they know how to market things they know how to you know organize the campaign.

320
00:45:45,000 –> 00:46:01,000
What kind of assets, what kind of photos to put there and everything. So what kind of people, what kind of person are you and how does it play into you into your startup like experience, or maybe you’re like a completely different person maybe you’re a blend of several things.

321
00:46:01,000 –> 00:46:15,000
Yeah, that’s a really interesting like concept. I think I might be a blend of two. And I think I originally started off as a marketer, not to be, you know, obvious that I was a marketer and that’s the type of person I am.

322
00:46:15,000 –> 00:46:25,000
But I think what you just described there in terms of the marketer is someone that can kind of frame things in a way that it would be delivered in a palatable way.

323
00:46:25,000 –> 00:46:35,000
I think that’s something that I have been doing. I think the reason why I got the first job and the second job. You know the reason why I thought I fell into it.

324
00:46:35,000 –> 00:46:51,000
That’s what I say often when people ask me why did you make these career changes because they’re not that logical when you look at it is because I framed the opportunity and how I would fit into it with retrospect I think I must have framed it decently before me to get that

325
00:46:51,000 –> 00:46:55,000
because in a lot of senses it doesn’t make sense.

326
00:46:55,000 –> 00:47:05,000
And so, I think in startups, it’s important to know how to frame yourself and how to frame your product and your service.

327
00:47:05,000 –> 00:47:11,000
And then it goes back to what I was saying earlier being genuine and being likable is really important. And a lot of it is.

328
00:47:11,000 –> 00:47:26,000
I think a lot of people think that bluffing and lying is a part of you know faking it till you make it as you said earlier, there is that you know approach as well but I like to think of it as framing is more important than bluffing or lying.

329
00:47:26,000 –> 00:47:42,000
I think it’s about putting your positive traits forward. It’s about understanding the other person and what they’re looking for, and then positioning yourself and your business and your services, if it makes sense to appeal, most to them.

330
00:47:42,000 –> 00:48:05,000
And so I think that’s an important thing to do and as a marketer I think somehow I’ve managed to do that. And then later in life, I think I became a connector, because I’m only just starting that phase of life now since I’ve networked quite a bit in the last few years, I’m only just starting to become someone that connects other people like you said earlier and you’re really great at that you’re great at bringing people together and you don’t need any of the spotlight yourself I can tell.

331
00:48:05,000 –> 00:48:19,000
And you just, you, I guess you find great joy in bringing people together and I think me and you share that, which is quite nice and I think that when we were at events together you can really see the harmony between everyone because you know you’re there to bring people together.

332
00:48:19,000 –> 00:48:36,000
So, I find immense fulfillment and I find it very rewarding when people meet each other through, you know, through something that I’ve brought together. And I think that’s important later in life to be able to give back that value, but at the beginning, for sure yeah, connecting with the right people

333
00:48:36,000 –> 00:48:48,000
and framing yourself in a way pitching yourself and selling yourself well will get you those initial doors to open to then lead to those other opportunities that we all need, essentially.

334
00:48:48,000 –> 00:48:52,000
So you’re a blend of two things, as you think, right?

335
00:48:52,000 –> 00:48:55,000
I think so yeah, yeah, based on your description.

336
00:48:55,000 –> 00:49:12,000
And it’s interesting, like with your sister, you did, you started the business with your sister right? So how would you describe her, like involvement, and how did she bring value to it?

337
00:49:12,000 –> 00:49:24,000
And just generally, the place where I’m coming from right now is because we, I have a brother, and we have a lot of ideas, like you know, join business ideas together.

338
00:49:24,000 –> 00:49:40,000
And some of the ideas could like play out well, some of them couldn’t. It’s just like the distance so it’s so huge that you know it’s just not viable to do business together because we’re like separated by 5000 kilometers or something.

339
00:49:40,000 –> 00:49:57,000
And, but also I think that, you know, not for every couple of siblings, it works. Some siblings are just not, you know, in a good dynamics with each other, like they’re fighting or maybe they’re not fighting but they’re just hating each other’s guts.

340
00:49:57,000 –> 00:50:09,000
So for you, like, what was, how did it work? And what was your role, like how she complemented your maybe shortcomings in terms of business and everything like that?

341
00:50:09,000 –> 00:50:19,000
I’m really glad you asked that Dimitri because it is an interesting story. And I do think it’s very true, a lot of family members aren’t meant to be in business together.

342
00:50:19,000 –> 00:50:27,000
People do warn people of, you know, don’t go to, don’t go into business with family can get very complicated. That is very true. It’s certainly very true.

343
00:50:27,000 –> 00:50:40,000
But for us, you know, we have a seven year age gap, first of all, so there is a clear distance there as well in terms of our upbringing, we never shared many similarities because of, you know, how we had very different life stages.

344
00:50:40,000 –> 00:50:49,000
But, and so we weren’t very close and we also used to fight a lot as well so definitely share your sentiments. She’s the older one? She’s the younger one. She’s the younger one.

345
00:50:49,000 –> 00:51:03,000
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I’m, I’m the older sister that knows everything and she’s supposed to listen to me, you know. So, you know, there’s definitely egos there and there’s definitely lots of sibling rivalry that can come in.

346
00:51:03,000 –> 00:51:13,000
But what’s interesting is that, you know, our MBTIs firstly are quite similar, but there’s one key letter that’s very different. So I am INTP and she is INFP.

347
00:51:13,000 –> 00:51:20,000
So I’m a thinking person and she’s a feeling person and that used to be something we’d clash over a lot.

348
00:51:20,000 –> 00:51:32,000
But what I think the magic of how we came together is that she came up with the idea firstly. So she got inspired by Korea, she visited Korea when she was at university and she came.

349
00:51:32,000 –> 00:51:38,000
And it just felt like the culture was so amazing that she wanted to bring it to everyone else around the world.

350
00:51:38,000 –> 00:51:39,000
She’s in Korea now?

351
00:51:39,000 –> 00:51:40,000
Yeah, she’s in Korea now.

352
00:51:40,000 –> 00:51:41,000
So you’re still doing business together?

353
00:51:41,000 –> 00:51:46,000
We don’t anymore, but we still catch up a lot and see each other a lot.

354
00:51:46,000 –> 00:51:53,000
But what happened was she was inspired by Korea at the very same time I had gone backpacking. So I told that story earlier.

355
00:51:53,000 –> 00:52:01,000
That was happening all at the same time. And so I came back from backpacking inspired by other cultures and while she was inspired by Korea.

356
00:52:01,000 –> 00:52:06,000
So she told me, look, I want to start this business, you know, it’s a Korean culture subscription box.

357
00:52:06,000 –> 00:52:14,000
And because I had previously started my own business, so I didn’t actually mention this earlier, but I had a Korean fashion business when I was at that media agency.

358
00:52:14,000 –> 00:52:20,000
I started that with my friend and she and I ran it together for two years, too early to the market.

359
00:52:20,000 –> 00:52:25,000
It was in 2012, just before Gangnam Style hit the world.

360
00:52:25,000 –> 00:52:29,000
And we were really into K-Fashion back then, but no one else was.

361
00:52:29,000 –> 00:52:37,000
And so when Gangnam Style suddenly went viral, everyone’s like, oh, you know, this this pop, you know, K-pop thing, but they still weren’t ready for K-Fashion.

362
00:52:37,000 –> 00:52:43,000
The K-pop wave had only just begun and it was very infant in its, you know, the stage.

363
00:52:43,000 –> 00:52:46,000
So anyway, so I had that random start off for two years and it failed massively.

364
00:52:46,000 –> 00:52:54,000
So I got over that. And because my sister was fresh out of university and I thought, you know what, I can tell you what to do because I’ve done it before.

365
00:52:54,000 –> 00:52:59,000
You know, that kind of system mentality. And I had just come back from backpacking.

366
00:52:59,000 –> 00:53:04,000
I had no job. I was just chilling at home. And I thought, why not? Why not help my sister out? Let’s see how this works.

367
00:53:04,000 –> 00:53:10,000
Let’s not make any big commitments. You know, I’m not going to say that I’m going to get a job out of this. I’ll just help you out.

368
00:53:10,000 –> 00:53:20,000
And what happened was we both entered a very relaxed agreement where we would just do whatever we felt comfortable with and whatever we felt we could add value to.

369
00:53:20,000 –> 00:53:27,000
And let’s not put a title to it. So I didn’t have a job title for the first, I want to say, like six months to eight, eight months or even a year.

370
00:53:27,000 –> 00:53:35,000
I just did whatever I thought I could do. And so naturally what happened was because my sister is a feeling type, she’s very creative.

371
00:53:35,000 –> 00:53:44,000
She comes up with the concepts and how the brand visual should look and what the product should look like and where the product comes from in terms of the inspiration.

372
00:53:44,000 –> 00:53:51,000
She’s very good at that. I’m not very artistic. I’m not very creative, but I am very logical and I’m very thinking.

373
00:53:51,000 –> 00:53:59,000
And so I took care of the spreadsheets and I started to slowly do the logistics and I did the financial forecasts.

374
00:53:59,000 –> 00:54:07,000
And then I started to look at shipping and what else did I do? I did marketing, obviously, because that’s where I came from.

375
00:54:07,000 –> 00:54:13,000
And then I suddenly discovered that I really enjoy talking to customers because I really loved getting to know them.

376
00:54:13,000 –> 00:54:16,000
And so then I slowly, slowly took over customer experience.

377
00:54:16,000 –> 00:54:29,000
So my sister started handling more the creative side of things, the writer team, because we had a magazine, the sourcing of the product because she wanted to control what the product looked like, the brand visuals, the photography, everything.

378
00:54:29,000 –> 00:54:36,000
And then I did all the marketing, logistics and customer experience. And that suddenly covered about 90% of the business.

379
00:54:36,000 –> 00:54:37,000
It does, yeah.

380
00:54:37,000 –> 00:54:45,000
Yeah. The only thing left was things that we both really hated, which is tax and accounting.

381
00:54:45,000 –> 00:54:48,000
We all hate that. I mean, unless you’re a tax and accountant.

382
00:54:48,000 –> 00:54:51,000
They do. They hated it the most.

383
00:54:51,000 –> 00:54:57,000
But it was the boring, the most boring part of our business. We both hated it. We hated invoices and having to submit it and stuff.

384
00:54:57,000 –> 00:55:09,000
But anyway, so we naturally fell into that. And what we found is that our MBTI really helped us like understanding each other and understanding ourselves really helped because we were both intuitive and we were both introverted.

385
00:55:09,000 –> 00:55:14,000
So we understood that that’s how our energy gets drained and how we spend our time.

386
00:55:14,000 –> 00:55:19,000
And then being intuitive meant that we perceive the world in a very similar way.

387
00:55:19,000 –> 00:55:34,000
And I think this is really important to make a point about that. If you’re going to find a co-founder, find someone that sees the world the same way you do, or at least has the same mission as you, has the same goals as you, has the same values as you as much as possible.

388
00:55:34,000 –> 00:55:48,000
And because we came from the same family and because we really believed in spreading culture to different people and trying to bring the world together, it helped so much because in any situation we were in, any challenges we came across, we knew that that was our North Star.

389
00:55:48,000 –> 00:55:52,000
We knew that that’s what we were trying to do. So there’s no question about it. We never fought over that.

390
00:55:52,000 –> 00:56:01,000
What we did fight over though would be the fact that I’m thinking brain, so I’m logical and I see things as A plus B equals C, you know, why would it be any other way?

391
00:56:01,000 –> 00:56:12,000
Whereas she’s much more feeling and creative based. And so a lot of the times I didn’t understand her decisions because she was basing on a feeling and she wouldn’t understand my logical process because I had mapped it all out.

392
00:56:12,000 –> 00:56:20,000
So, you know, there would be that clash, but I think we made the perfect team because I covered those thinking functions and she covered those feeling functions.

393
00:56:20,000 –> 00:56:33,000
I think we complemented each other really well. That’s how we became co-CEOs. And I know that going through Techstars, they did not strongly, did not recommend anyone be co-CEOs because one person should be CEO, shouldn’t be two people.

394
00:56:33,000 –> 00:56:44,000
But in our case, everyone agreed that we were the exception. And I think that that kind of told us a lot that we made it that far. We were a team. We were kind of two halves of the same person, I would say.

395
00:56:44,000 –> 00:56:52,000
We spent so much time together, we could finish each other’s sentences, you know, we would travel together, we’d live together, we worked together. Everything was together.

396
00:56:52,000 –> 00:57:07,000
So I think that was a very unique case. I did not think that would happen. And all these things fell together in the right way. And I understand that it may not be the case for everyone. So I think those are important pointers to look at when it comes to finding your co-founder.

397
00:57:07,000 –> 00:57:13,000
And yeah, that’s all the advice I can give because it just fell together for me.

398
00:57:13,000 –> 00:57:18,000
I suddenly caught myself thinking that I would love to introduce you sister too.

399
00:57:18,000 –> 00:57:24,000
I wanted to hear her perspective on what happened. Oh yeah, she will probably give you a very different side of the coin.

400
00:57:24,000 –> 00:57:34,000
She never understood me. She was the overbearing sister. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it would be interesting to hear what she would have to say.

401
00:57:34,000 –> 00:57:50,000
I think we both had to grow a lot together and we had to really hold each other, you know, as support, as support systems, one of us or both of us would often be too tired to carry on, you know, and so we had to be a tag team.

402
00:57:50,000 –> 00:58:00,000
And sometimes neither of us wanted to do the meeting or do the assignment, whatever it might be, you know, rewrite a whole pitch deck. Sometimes we both don’t want to do it, but someone has to do it.

403
00:58:00,000 –> 00:58:05,000
And so you have to really trust your partner, whoever you’re going into that they have your back.

404
00:58:05,000 –> 00:58:12,000
And I strongly believe that, you know, we always had each other’s backs. So that is a trait that I really appreciate.

405
00:58:12,000 –> 00:58:21,000
And I didn’t know I was going to get when I said I would help her out with a business. I didn’t think that it would be six years long, but I am really grateful for that.

406
00:58:21,000 –> 00:58:35,000
So yeah, it’s important. That is wonderful insight because especially because you are like, it’s so rare to see two people being co-CEOs and actually working together.

407
00:58:35,000 –> 00:58:43,000
Usually, as you mentioned, it’s like a subordinate and the CEO kind of relationship more often than not. I mean, most of the time.

408
00:58:43,000 –> 00:58:51,000
Yeah. And the question I had was, how did you first secure your first investor?

409
00:58:51,000 –> 00:59:01,000
And what would you recommend to people who want to start their business in terms of finding investors or maybe trying to sell fund at first?

410
00:59:01,000 –> 00:59:06,000
Or like, how does it work? Yeah. So important disclaimer here.

411
00:59:06,000 –> 00:59:17,000
We never had any external investors other than tech stars. So we were completely bootstrapped the whole entire time until we got invested in by Techstars, the accelerator program.

412
00:59:17,000 –> 00:59:26,000
And further from the program, we didn’t attract any further investment. I mean, we got quite far in terms of investor meetings, but we never actually secured investment.

413
00:59:26,000 –> 00:59:33,000
So I think that’s an important thing is that, you know, some people do ask me, oh, how do you how do you get investors and how do you get investors attention?

414
00:59:33,000 –> 00:59:38,000
I’m not the best person to ask, to be honest, because I haven’t successfully done that whole, you know, the whole thing.

415
00:59:38,000 –> 00:59:44,000
And I do give props to anyone who’s raised investment because it’s a huge, huge undertaking.

416
00:59:44,000 –> 00:59:53,000
It’s the most stressful thing. Like anyone I’ve asked that has raised investment will say that it is the most difficult and the most stressful thing they’ve ever done.

417
00:59:53,000 –> 01:00:08,000
And so it’s no easy task. I’d say, you know, the few things I’ve learned is attracting tech stars. Firstly, I think that’s the only thing I can say is the claim to fame because we managed to get their investment.

418
01:00:08,000 –> 01:00:25,000
So for that, we had to really lean on a few things. So as I mentioned earlier, being genuine, being likable, you know, we were two sisters from the UK, Asian and, you know, with a British accent presenting our Korean culture box.

419
01:00:25,000 –> 01:00:34,000
I mean, we’re pretty rare. I mean, it’s quite it’s not the it’s not that often you come across that kind of product and combo when it comes to CEOs.

420
01:00:34,000 –> 01:00:43,000
And so I think for one thing, we did have that standout ability that that factor playing to our favor.

421
01:00:43,000 –> 01:00:48,000
The second thing I would say is that we always demonstrated our passion for our business.

422
01:00:48,000 –> 01:00:54,000
So we always talked about what mission that we had, which was very meaningful. And it’s something that a lot of people relate to.

423
01:00:54,000 –> 01:01:01,000
So, again, this isn’t going to apply to everyone, but I think try to make it as relatable as possible and as genuine as possible.

424
01:01:01,000 –> 01:01:07,000
We just told people we really want to spread the word of Korean culture and in future other cultures.

425
01:01:07,000 –> 01:01:11,000
We did inspire me Japan as well. And we wanted to branch out to other countries.

426
01:01:11,000 –> 01:01:18,000
We just wanted to bring people together and teach people about other people’s cultures in the hopes of just more curiosity and more harmony.

427
01:01:18,000 –> 01:01:26,000
And I think very few people would not, you know, vibe with that or or at least appreciate that.

428
01:01:26,000 –> 01:01:34,000
And so they found it fascinating. I don’t think we really had many meetings where we were disliked in an outwardly anyway.

429
01:01:34,000 –> 01:01:42,000
I don’t know what they were thinking inside, but we generally would have very pleasant meetings and people would generally tell us, you know, I love what you guys are doing.

430
01:01:42,000 –> 01:01:47,000
Keep going because you guys are awesome. And it was nice to be recognized in that way.

431
01:01:47,000 –> 01:01:55,000
But I would say that business is real and business is cruel. You can be likable, but your product can also be not the right product for investors to invest in.

432
01:01:55,000 –> 01:02:00,000
So I think the big thing for us was understanding that we had something really cool.

433
01:02:00,000 –> 01:02:03,000
We had something we really believed in and other people seem to believe in it, too.

434
01:02:03,000 –> 01:02:09,000
But it wasn’t going to be viable commercially or economically.

435
01:02:09,000 –> 01:02:16,000
And by that, I meant investors liked us, but they knew that numbers weren’t adding up and they therefore they couldn’t give us their money.

436
01:02:16,000 –> 01:02:20,000
And that makes sense, too. So it’s got to be a combination of all those things.

437
01:02:20,000 –> 01:02:35,000
You’ve got to have this sort of the je ne sais quoi, I guess. You know, you have to you have to have some sort of charisma, some sort of likeability factor, as well as having something that can demonstrate product market fit, can demonstrate that you’re going to make money,

438
01:02:35,000 –> 01:02:42,000
as well as have all the numbers add up and for investors to really take out their wallet and sign a meaningful check for you.

439
01:02:42,000 –> 01:02:51,000
So we never got to that initial, you know, the last stage, but we were bootstrapped and it is really difficult because we weren’t paying ourselves for the longest time.

440
01:02:51,000 –> 01:02:56,000
You know, six years is a long time to go through that bootstrap journey.

441
01:02:56,000 –> 01:03:08,000
And I’d say the only thing that kept us alive was the passion and the mission, because there wasn’t there wasn’t anything else in terms of, you know, a regular job would give you a salary and benefits and a team to work with resources.

442
01:03:08,000 –> 01:03:13,000
We had none of those things. We really had to just purely go with our own drive.

443
01:03:13,000 –> 01:03:18,000
And so I think that that plus resilience is really key.

444
01:03:18,000 –> 01:03:27,000
But I think attracting going back to your final point, you know, attracting investors, I do think you need to be proactive. You need to go out there and make those connections.

445
01:03:27,000 –> 01:03:41,000
You have to believe in your product, have a sound pitch and go out there and just do as many meetings as possible, because each one you’ll learn something about what’s not working and try to get that feedback as much as possible.

446
01:03:41,000 –> 01:03:46,000
If an investor is not going to invest, just just ask them, hey, look, just wondering what your thoughts are.

447
01:03:46,000 –> 01:03:52,000
Do you have any feedback for me? Is there a reason why you said no? I think that’s definitely a valid question to ask.

448
01:03:52,000 –> 01:04:01,000
And and knowing what the fallback might be is very valuable to continuing to pivot yourself and try to get to that stage.

449
01:04:01,000 –> 01:04:14,000
Right. That’s very insightful, especially from a person who probably you’ve seen along your career, like alongside of doing your own thing, you saw other people getting investments or other people like failing and getting investments.

450
01:04:14,000 –> 01:04:27,000
So you definitely know a lot, even though, as you mentioned, there is a huge disclaimer that you never got like security and investor that’s still, you know, like six years of doing startup is definitely a huge period of time to learn and especially learn from others experience.

451
01:04:27,000 –> 01:04:31,000
So I think your opinion is completely valid here.

452
01:04:31,000 –> 01:04:52,000
And one last question I had is, do you still fancy Korea as a place for like a good startup, you know, like a good country for starting the business or do you have like a different, you know, impression of Korea right now?

453
01:04:52,000 –> 01:05:01,000
And what are the, you know, maybe underwater stones for anyone who decides to to penetrate the market in Korea?

454
01:05:01,000 –> 01:05:19,000
Like, what’s your vision about this? I think that is a very fascinating and complicated question because having been here almost four years as a foreigner, I’ve seen many great sides and I’ve also seen some not so great sides.

455
01:05:19,000 –> 01:05:24,000
And so it’s difficult to talk about without all of those things being part of it.

456
01:05:24,000 –> 01:05:32,000
But I think we have a huge advantage firstly being here as foreigners. You know, there’s definitely many challenges to living here. That’s for sure.

457
01:05:32,000 –> 01:05:44,000
And I think when I speak to foreigners and expats in Korea, we all resonate over similar things, you know, how the challenges are here and setting up your life and getting over the language barrier, the cultural barrier, many things.

458
01:05:44,000 –> 01:06:01,000
And I’m sure that will be talked about on your podcast endlessly. But I do think that being here as a foreigner, if you can carve yourself out the niche, which is, you know what you’re doing, you relatively have an expertise or a field that you’re in that you’re confident in.

459
01:06:01,000 –> 01:06:19,000
And you do your research in terms of what opportunities are available in Korea, what we roughly get paid and how you can leverage yourself. I think you, you know, we can have a very good time here because Korea is in a state right now where it needs to go global in order to continue its growth.

460
01:06:19,000 –> 01:06:27,000
And everything is about going global right now. In fact, as we were walking in here today, we saw hashtag go global on the on the wall as we were coming in.

461
01:06:27,000 –> 01:06:42,000
Yeah, there’s there’s an event going on today, literally about going global, it seems. And so it’s on everybody’s mind. It’s on everybody’s lips. And if you can somehow position yourself to be helpful towards that goal, I think for sure there’s so much to be done here.

462
01:06:42,000 –> 01:06:59,000
There’s so many opportunities. The startup ecosystem here I think is very exciting. There is always people to meet and always people with great ideas, always great projects happening and whether they’re good products or not so good products or startups that are trying to do something

463
01:06:59,000 –> 01:07:12,000
and will succeed or startups that are probably going to fail. You know, there’s a mixture of all of that. And as with any ecosystem, but I think that I’ve had the most fun being in Korea, having coffee chats with exciting people endlessly.

464
01:07:12,000 –> 01:07:25,000
There’s just always more people to me, always more ideas exchanged. And, and I think that the thriving ecosystem is something that is so, so worth it to come here and try out.

465
01:07:25,000 –> 01:07:34,000
But then again, it all depends on your field. I think IT and tech is something I don’t know that much about. So I’m not sure how to, you know, advise people on whether to come for that.

466
01:07:34,000 –> 01:07:44,000
But I think foreigners here as well really are so genuine and helpful to each other because we all know the struggles we can, you know, face.

467
01:07:44,000 –> 01:07:59,000
So I’ve always met kind and genuine people through that. And we’re all just trying to help each other out, especially the community that you’re creating, Dimitri. So I think that it is a ripe time to come and experience it.

468
01:07:59,000 –> 01:08:09,000
If you can, you know, take that break or or fly here from your own country and come to experience it. I think it’s definitely a worthwhile thing.

469
01:08:09,000 –> 01:08:20,000
And I certainly don’t regret coming here. It’s been amazing. So, you know, and I’ve had the fortune to have worked in SAS and also worked in like cosmetics and various different fields.

470
01:08:20,000 –> 01:08:31,000
I think as a foreigner, you can try your hand at different things as long as you have your grounding in some principle or some, you know, for me it was marketing and global expansion and startup mentality.

471
01:08:31,000 –> 01:08:42,000
And then having that foreigner perspective gives you so much worth here that I think it’s it’s a very nice exchange of the foreign mentality versus understanding Korean culture and the other way around.

472
01:08:42,000 –> 01:08:51,000
And it’s this really nice dialogue of two cultures trying to get to know each other. So I think it’s beautiful, honestly, and I would recommend it.

473
01:08:51,000 –> 01:09:09,000
That’s yeah. One last remark, as I say about this duality of globalization. You mentioned I like it a lot because, you know, going global from Korea outside is definitely like a big thing.

474
01:09:09,000 –> 01:09:23,000
But I think like letting global in from outside to Korea is also a big thing, a big part of future of Korea, I’d say, especially with the demographic situation and everything.

475
01:09:23,000 –> 01:09:31,000
It’s like it’s becoming apparent to people here and everyone else that Korea also needs to open up. I mean, you can export as much as you want.

476
01:09:31,000 –> 01:09:39,000
You already did that. Like South Korea already did that with K drama, with K-pop, a lot of Korean products and K beauty and everything, K food.

477
01:09:39,000 –> 01:09:49,000
But letting other countries also influence Korea, I think, is a big, big part of the future of this country.

478
01:09:49,000 –> 01:10:08,000
And I think you being here actually signifies that South Korea is taking big steps, big strides towards this goal of becoming more open, become more globalized inside rather than trying to just export this culture.

479
01:10:08,000 –> 01:10:31,000
And I find it this trend and your presence here in this country, like especially fascinating, amazing and, you know, I would say like exemplary in this way because you just decided to introduce more people to Korean culture.

480
01:10:31,000 –> 01:10:41,000
But you ended up after that coming to Korea and being introduced to Korean culture even more, even though you started at a slightly different place, you know.

481
01:10:41,000 –> 01:10:52,000
So I find it really fascinating and I want to thank you very much for sharing your experience and expertise on our podcast.

482
01:10:52,000 –> 01:11:11,000
And I hope to get to talk to you again in maybe once you start a new business, maybe once you start a new startup, I would definitely want to talk to you about that and learn, you know, your experience and how you view this country in terms of like a startup base or anything.

483
01:11:11,000 –> 01:11:13,000
Maybe something changes. Maybe something doesn’t.

484
01:11:13,000 –> 01:11:22,000
I actually hope that something changes and I hope that the best parts of you with overcoming fear and your personality, they just don’t change because you’re a wonderful person. Thank you very much.

485
01:11:22,000 –> 01:11:29,000
Oh, thank you, Dimitri. Thank you for being so kind. It’s really been an honor to be on your podcast. I’ve enjoyed this conversation immensely.

486
01:11:29,000 –> 01:11:36,000
And yeah, I just I’m so grateful. So thank you. I’ve had such a great time.

487
01:11:36,000 –> 01:11:38,000
I love this podcast.

488
01:11:38,000 –> 01:11:39,000
This is so wonderful.

489
01:11:39,000 –> 01:11:43,000
This episode is wonderful.