Chapter 29: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense
The last day of the Korea University Startup Hackathon.
As the final presentations approached, twenty-five teams were busy wrapping up their work.
Dark circles under their eyes, dull and dry skin, messy hair, and chapped lips were all evidence of how hard everyone had worked over the past four days.
The concept of competition had significantly faded, giving way to a budding sense of camaraderie.
Shortly after, the hackathon participants began to gather one by one. The host, Lee Jun-ho, took the microphone and stepped onto the stage.
“Hello everyone, I’m Lee Jun-ho. You’ve all worked incredibly hard over the past four days. Now it’s time to present the results of your efforts. Are you all feeling confident?”
A roar of applause met his question, and Lee Jun-ho couldn’t help but smile.
“You’re all so confident that you don’t even need to answer. Excellent. Before we began the final presentations, let me introduce our esteemed panel judges. We have Head of the Korea University Industry-Academia Cooperation Foundation, Kim Hong-gil; Patent Attorney, Choi Myung-gu; DUK Ventures VC, Jang Seok-hyun; and last but not least, the founder of ‘Chagi-sa’ who successfully goes public, CEO Park Min-soo.”
As each name was called, the respective judge stood up and nodded.
“Is that the guy who created ‘Chagi-sa’? He looks younger than I thought.”
“How much was it sold to Wave for?”
“If I remember correctly, it was sold for around 80 billion won.”
“Wow, that’s crazy. So, that means he must have made at least 50 billion won.”
The chatter from the next table drifted into my ears.
50 billion won.
Even though I owned assets worth over 10 billion won, I couldn’t help but feel humbled by the sheer magnitude of the figure of 50 billion won.
At that moment, a staff member approached and whispered something to Lee Jun-ho.
“Oh! It appears we have an additional special judge. Please welcome Director Sulaiman VC from Nooroq Partners, a venture capital firm that traveled all the way from the United Arab Emirates.”
A man in a white turban with a thick beard, who looked unmistakably Arab, greeted the participants with a smile and raised his hand.
Next to him sat a man who appeared to be his interpreter.
“Now, I know what you’re most interested in: the awards. A total of nine teams will be honored today, with one gold medal, two silver medals, three bronze medals, and three honorable mentions. The gold medal-winning team will receive the Ministry of Science, Information and Communication Technology Minister’s Award along with a cash prize of 10 million won. The silver medal-winning teams will receive the Korea University President’s Award and a cash prize of 3 million won, while the bronze medal-winning teams will receive the University-Industry Cooperation Foundation President’s Award and a cash prize of 1 million won.”
Lee Jun-ho looked around at the participants with a meaningful smile.
“Oh, and one more thing to add. The gold medal-winning team will also gain direct entry into the finals of ‘Challenge K-Startup’, the nation’s largest startup competition!”
Murmurs filled the room.
“Wow, I heard that competition gives out hundreds of millions in prize money! Is that true?”
“That makes sense. It’s like a competition for the big leagues in Korea, right? I heard it’s mostly teams with proven business models, not just startups in the early stages.”
“Alright! As with the midterm presentations, we will randomly select the order of presentations for fairness.”
Shortly after, the presentation order appeared on the screen, eliciting mixed reactions from the teams.
“Oh, crap! We’re first.”
“Being too late isn’t great either. People get tired of listening.”
“Ugly Duckling… Ugly Duckling… Oh! There we are. We’re… last.”
“Perfect. We can wrap things up with a bang.”
Finally, the teams began their final presentations.
“This is our team’s prototype model. It’s a smartphone app that utilizes motion sensors to assist the elderly or individuals with disabilities who have difficulty using smartphones.”
Many teams produced outstanding results, given the large number of participants. Several teams developed highly polished apps with smooth functionality, while others created IoT prototypes using Arduino.
What truly captivated attention was the sheer brilliance of their presentations
“This is a smart wearable device designed to guide the correct use of a cast when you have a fracture injury. It integrates with an app via low-frequency sensors, gyroscopes, and Bluetooth.”
However, these presentations failed to impress the judges.
With somber expressions, they listened to the presentations and then unleashed a barrage of piercing questions.
“How do you plan to market this? It doesn’t seem feasible through regular sales channels.”
“It looks flashy but lacks substance. What is the core value of this service?”
“I can see you’ve put in a lot of effort to study this field. But how do you plan to sell it? What’s your strategy?”
The presenters squirmed under the judges’ sharp questioning, beads of sweat trickling down their foreheads.
Witnessing the presenters’ souls being stripped bare, the remaining presenters gulped nervously.
“This is intense. Do hackathons always go this hard?”
“This isn’t just any hackathon. This is the Korea University Hackathon. this level of tension is to be expected.”
Thus, one by one, teams were cut down by the judges’ sharp tongues, and before we knew it, our turn finally came.
Lee Jang-won wiped his sweaty palms on his pants and bit his lip.
“Relax, man. If you’re more nervous than I am, what are we gonna do?”
“Teamwork, right? Hehe, I can’t help being nervous.”
Now much more at ease, Lee Jang-won gave a goofy smile.
“Now, there’s only one team left. Ugly Duckling team, please come up and start your presentation.”
“Fighting, hyung!”
“Do well and come back.”
With the encouragement of my two teammates, I stepped up to the podium, and our presentation materials were displayed on the screen.
“Hello, everyone. My name is Song Dae-woon, and I will be presenting on behalf of Team Ugly Duckling. The service we’ve developed is a new concept SNS called ‘Thumbs Up’. In an era where hate is rampant, we started with the idea, ‘What if we could encourage people to compliment each other and boost their self-confidence?'”
My calm yet powerful voice drew everyone’s attention.
“I’m sure you all have memories of school days when, at the end of the year, there were surveys in class publications. Questions like, ‘Who is most likely to become rich?’ or ‘Who is most likely to get married first?’ Thumbs Up turns these kinds of surveys into a social media platform.”
I continued with an explanation of Thumbs Up’s key features and market analysis.
Initially, the judges seemed intrigued, but their expressions grew increasingly indifferent as the presentation went on.
“That concludes my presentation on ‘Thumbs Up’. Thank you for listening.”
Clap clap clap
Scattered applause filled the air, devoid of any genuine enthusiasm. The judges, with predatory looks, grabbed the microphone.
“Thank you for the final presentation. I’m Jang Seok-hyun from DUK Ventures. I suppose it’s fair to say that your service, Thumbs Up, is a variation of existing SNS. But, even if you target a niche market, isn’t it too small? The idea of a service that encourages compliments is great, but what’s the point if there are no users? Does Ugly Duckling Team have a strategy to address this?”
That was the question I expected.
In fact, it was the situation I had planned for.
To deliver a knockout punch that would knock the wind out of our opponent, it was crucial to counter their attack with a well-timed counterpunch.
“First of all, thank you for your excellent question. It’s a very valid point. No matter how good the intentions are, if there are no users, it’s like digging in the air. That’s why I wanted to verify it. Is there really a need for our service? Please pay attention to the next slide.”
As I pressed the remote control, the hidden PPT slides appeared on the screen.
Jang Seok-hyun’s voice trembled faintly as he looked at the data.
“What is this…?”
“Our team completed the development of an MVP with only the minimal essential features within two days, and from the third day onwards, we focused on large-scale user recruitment. As you can see, the number of visitors to our ‘Thumbs Up’ service exceeded 100,000 in just two days.”
“W-what? One hundred thousand?”
“One hundred thousand in two days? Is that even possible?”
Murmuring filled the room as they reacted to the shocking log analysis data.
Park Min-soo, the founder of Chagi-sa, hurriedly grabbed the microphone.
“How could you possibly attract 100,000 users in just two days? It’s beyond comprehension.”
“It’s the power of viral marketing.”
“Viral marketing, you say…”
“We listed out schools in the Seoul and Gyeonggi areas with large student populations and used Instagram marketing to naturally attract users to our web service. But what I’d like you to focus on is this.”
I pressed the remote-control button to reveal another slide.
“If you look at this log data, there are several key points to note. Not only is the number of visitors increasing, but so are the page views. This indicates a high level of satisfaction among visitors with our services and a high rate of return visits.”
The judges, who had been sitting indifferently, perked up and leaned forward in their chairs, and then began jotting down notes in their books, which they hadn’t opened once.
“As you can see from the traffic sources, the fundamental reason why we were able to record 100,000 visitors in just two days is the traffic sources. As you can see here, the traffic sources for the most recent visitors are mostly the same.”
“KakaoTalk?”
“That’s right. People who find the ‘Thumbs Up’ service enjoyable share links with their friends through KakaoTalk and encourage them to try it. They posted it in group chat rooms, like class group chats, which caused it to go viral rapidly.”
“Oh my…”
The judges, who had been sitting upright and stern the whole time, were visibly stunned and their mouths agape.
Park Min-soo, having regained his composure, posed a sharp question.
“It’s truly remarkable that you’ve been able to validate customer needs so intuitively and quickly. However, ‘Thumbs Up’ has one critical issue: it lacks a clear business model. How do you plan to make money from this service?”
This was another trap question, carefully laid out and waiting to be sprung.
I had anticipated this question.
I naturally transitioned the slide on the screen and drew everyone’s attention.
“Please look at the screen. These are posts from users of ‘Thumbs Up’ on our customer bulletin board. They’re flooding the board with requests to find out who voted for them, and many are willing to pay for this information.”
As the judges saw the numerous posts on the customer bulletin board, their pens became busy again.
“As you can see, users are thrilled with receiving votes but they are also losing sleep over not knowing who voted for them. Think back to the days when the ‘visitor tracker’ was popular on mini-homepages. It’s a similar concept.”
The audience nodded in understanding, seemingly convinced.
“So, in the future, we plan to offer tiered hints about who voted for users as part of a paid service. Of course, we also intend to incorporate ads in a way that doesn’t disrupt the UI/UX.”
That’s when it happened.
Sulaiman of Nooroq Partners, who had been quietly watching the screen, raised his hand with a flutter of his turban.
His large eyes sparkled with interest as he spoke into the microphone.
“يا لها من خدمة رائعة. هل تعتقد أن هذه الخدمة يمكن أن تنتشر في جميع أنحاء العالم”
(“What a wonderful service. Do you think this service can succeed globally?”)
The audience looked bewildered as Arabic resonated through the speakers.
A flustered Lee Jun-ho looked for the interpreter, but unfortunately, it seemed he had stepped out for a moment.
“بالطبع. من الشائع عالميًا أن تريد الثناء.”
(“Of course. It’s a universal desire to be praised.”)
Sulaiman’s eyes widened in surprise at my sudden Arabic response, and a heavy silence fell over the room.
These people didn’t know.
The fact that many crew members on the Zeus, the ship I once worked on, were native Arabic speakers from Morocco and Egypt.
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