[2022-1 Entrepreneurship Academy NO.2 Lecture Series]

‘What you will experience when starting up a company’

The second round of the 2022-1 Entrepreneurship Lecture series, hosted by KUBS (Dean= Johngseok Bae) Startup Station(Director=Hojung Shin) was held on May 10th(Tue). The special lecture, held via Zoom, was given by CEO of the language data platform ‘Flitto’, Jung-soo Lee on the topic of ‘What you will experience when starting up a company,’ in which about 60 students participated.

CEO Lee started the lecture by saying, “I want to talk about the hard parts of startup rather than shining light on the bright side.” He said, “I was the 1st generation of startups, so I tasted failure and saw how others failed” and “failure of startups can happen to anyone, so it will be meaningful to think about how to prepare for it.” Also CEO Lee made an effort to induce participation of students from the start, saying that “We will have time to address students’ curiosity rather than just talk about what I prepared for the lecture.”

To the question, “I’m curious about why you decided on starting up a company even though there is a powerhouse like Google Translate,” CEO Lee answered with the process of how on 2012 when he decided on starting up a company the translation service was very poor and it has evolved to Google Translate, Papago in 2016 and how Flitto has been converted to B2B, C2C services. He said, “Big enterprises often miss certain details, usually because one sector is widely serviced,” and that “we can specialize and provide service for it.” Furthermore, he said “Currently, all the technologies are provided, so it depends on how we will garner data and make the translation process learn it”, and that “many startups are clinging to those specialized markets” about the current startup trends. “If you have faith, you can endure the period when you don't have sales." Flitto’s management team has set the standards for success as the day when children use Flitto to translate in rural Southeast Asian villages where languages coexist. He said "If you have a belief that you can make the item succeed to the standards you set, you can endure it."

For two hours, questions and answers on various topics such as efficient marketing, profit-generating structure in apps, and laying the foundation after business failure were followed, and active communication was conducted to the extent that students' questions were raised until the end of the lecture. CEO Lee concluded the lecture by saying, "It was a great experience to visit Korea University after a long time, and thank you for listening so well for a long time."