They’re building Korea’s answer to Thumbtack

Jiho Kang, Robin Kim, and Hwan Kim in front of the Y Combinator logo. Photo credit: Soomgo.

Korean-American Robin Kim first went to South Korea in 2007, right after graduating from business school in Atlanta, Georgia.

A decade on, Robin, 31, is still in Korea – and now he’s an experienced entrepreneur working on his second tech startup.

When I talk to him, he’s actually back in the States. That’s because his newest venture, Soomgo, is part of the current batch at famed Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator. Upon graduating at the end of the month, he’ll return to Seoul to apply what he’s learned to Soomgo, which connects local service providers with customers.

“We started initially servicing people who gave lessons – whether that be music or academics, a foreign language, sports, so on and so forth,” says the CEO. “Now we also cover home services, event planning services, wedding design services, business services. And we do plan to continually expand the offerings.” The site now has 25,000 registered service providers from all across South Korea.

Basically, it’s Korea’s answer to Thumbtack.

Matchmaker

Robin’s startup is benefitting from Thumbtack’s growth in the US in the past eight years by emulating its way of making money – charging professionals to send quotes to customers via a virtual credits system that costs real money. It’s a bit like the system – so I’m told – on Ashley Madison.

Thumbtack arrived at its business model after years of fumbling with other methods, such as charging service providers a monthly fee.

So the virtual credits system has been well road-tested and seems to be the way to go.

A busy street in Seoul. Photo credit: sepavo / 123RF.

“For the requesters, the people looking for a service, we really just want to be the search and discovery tool for them out there. For the providers, we just want to be the best lead generation tool,” explains Robin.

Unlike all the “Uber for cleaners” or “Uber for laundry” startups out there, Soomgo is not marshaling a troop of workers under one banner – and it’s not taking a slice of their wages, either. It’s simply a matchmaker. So Robin can expand the site in a flexible way, driven by what people are seeking, adding new categories when the need arises.

It’s traditionally a conglomerate-driven culture.