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| AppDisco CEO Jeong Soo-hwan, left, and CSO Yoo Bum-ryung |
By Cho Mu-hyun
For ambitious young men dreaming of starting their own businesses and becoming bosses, Korea's strong conservatism and ageism can be a real turnoff.
But 28-year-olds Jeong Soo-hwan and Yoo Bum-ryung, CEO and CSO, respectively, of start-up mobile advertisement platform provider AppDisco, are showing that the challenges confronting young people here can be overcome. Their success signals that Korea might be ready to see bosses wearing jeans, as does Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.
"I want people to automatically think of ‘vision and innovation' when they hear the name ‘AppDisco,'" said Jeong in an interview with The Korea Times at the company's office in Gangnam, Seoul.
"I wanted to make a company where people with dreams gather together and share their goals, and ultimately commit and grow together to achieve something that has real positive social impact."
The energetic young boss, who "never really planned or dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur," registered as a self-employed businessman in 2009 after taking a leave of absence from Korea University.
"More important than the business side was that I wanted to do something that could truly help people and make life better," said the CEO.
After a year, he had racked up a debt of 100 million won ($89,915), obviously a hefty burden for a person his age. "No one knew that I was starting my own business, even my family. And no one could imagine that I was burdened by debt," said Jeong, who dabbled in social commerce and other services that initially didn't go well.
"There was no going back because of the debts and at the time it was very difficult. But it made me realize that in business, you have to divide what you want to do and what you must do," he said.
Yoo, who met Jeong seven years ago at a time he was preparing for law school after graduating from Cornell University in the U.S., was asked to come on board during the difficult times. The CSO was the "calm brain" the aggressive Jeong needed, and they were a match made in heaven. "I am a pragmatist. When Jeong asked me to work together and pitched me AdLatte, I thought, ‘this could work,'" said Yoo.
After that the company leapfrogged forward.
AppDisco caught the local information technology (IT) industry by surprise in 2011 with its innovative ad service called "AdLatte" the first to implement a reward-based ad service. "I despise things that are redundant, and always want to try and make something new," said Jeong.
Previous ads on phones were just mere eye candy that tried to lure viewers to subscribe or buy without anything but possible optical pleasure, but AppDisco's ad service gave cyber money to subscribers every time they viewed an advertisement. It could be reserved and used to buy real items available at the AdLatte Store. The company now boasts 140 employees, has a monthly turnover of 1.8 billion won and has offices abroad.
"We literally went from door to door to advertisement companies to pitch our services. Meetings were so scarce that we used to have a whiteboard in the company, and wrote the name of the client company if we clinched a meeting, and celebrated together," said Yoo, chuckling at those times, which were diametrically different from now. "But now we have grown big enough that I think I need a doppelganger to attend all the meeting schedules."
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