He ditched a dream job at Google to build a tool used by thousands of designers

Photo credit: Protopie

Tony Kim is an artist. As a product designer at Naver and Google in South Korea, his work had a direct impact on millions of consumers. But he dreamed of building a masterpiece that he can call his own. So in 2014, he took the plunge and started his own company. His flagship product is ProtoPie, a tool that designers can use to create interactive prototypes without needing to code.

It’s showing promise. The software now has 10,000 monthly active users from 70 countries – a figure that’s growing by 20 percent a month. Companies like Google, Microsoft, Go-Jek, Traveloka, and Alibaba are using it. ProtoPie has two tiers: a perpetual license for US$99 and an enterprise edition that costs more.

Tech in Asia interviewed Kim to find out how he got to this stage, and how his company, which raised a US$3.5 million series A round in July, is doing. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Thank you for doing this interview with us, Tony. Going back to your past, you’ve had dream jobs at Naver and Google. What made you decide to do a startup?

Having your own product is a dream every designer usually has. Let me rephrase: I wanted to make a masterpiece that was my own. I combined this with my ambition of helping young designers and design students – the next generation – to make their own masterpieces. That’s why I decided to make a product that is a tool for designers.

It was great working at Naver and Google. However, after four years at Google, I felt it was time to leave. The people close to me attempted to make me stay, but none of them could go up against my passion and dream. Until today, I still feel sorry but I’m thankful for my wife’s support.

How did your wife support you through all this?

It can be hard to have private time after work. When I went back home very late one day, my wife prepared some hot tea and told me: “Doing a startup is similar to raising a baby. There are so many unexpected things and much care is required. I understand. I will take care of our children, you should take care of your little baby.”

Why is there a need for ProtoPie?

We designers always work under extreme time pressure. Every good designer knows the importance of prototyping. However, it’s quite tricky to have enough time to create proper, highly interactive prototypes. During my time at Google, there were already some prototyping tools. But they were either too basic, leading to prototypes that are rather static than interactive, or way too complicated due to coding and clunky interfaces. So I decided to make the easiest, code-free prototyping tool while aiming to maximize expressiveness for designers.

What does “expressiveness” mean here?

It’s about how rich and realistic your prototypes made in ProtoPie are. We always strive for prototypes that are indistinguishable from the real products. We want designers to be able to do this without a single line of code.