Born in Korea and graduated from KAIST, a well-known engineering college in Korea, Jimmy Rim is the CEO of K Cube Ventures, an early stage fund founded in 2012. At 32, Jimmy is the youngest CEO at a venture capital firm in Korea. In his keynote, Jimmy will share his tips on how young entrepreneurs can rise up to the challenge to become great CEOs and leaders.
#10:35: Jimmy steps on stage to start his talk.
#10:37: He’s going to talk to us today about why some startups failed and why others succeeded. Here’s some controversial issues that he has seen.
#10:40: His first tip: don’t do a startup, even though it’s the best time to do startup, etc. “The reason why I say this is because I see too many wantrapreneurs. There aren’t enough entrepreneurs who are doing it in order to solve a real problem. Most people in Asia just copy Silicon Valley startups and think they are going to succeed, but 99 percent of them fail.”
#10:41: “These startups out there read TechCrunch and think they can do it, but they never really believed in it. They just did it because they wanted to be cool.”
#10:42: Instead of doing a startup: “Only do a startup when you perceive yourself as a missionary to solve that specific problem.” Jimmy boils it down to persistence.
#10:43: Jimmy goes on to outline a few main tips in line with this: first movers don’t end up winning, competition will end up destroying first movers, A-players are the ones that build long lasting startups.
#10:44: “Some people think athletes cannot be intelligent but there is one example of a Korean Olympic athlete, Lee Eun-Chul, who went on to become a founder and CEO of an IT company with over $10 million of revenue annually.” This guy had to be the best in the world. He was an A-player.
#10:45: “When you are looking for a co-founder, take your time, because that is crucial.”
#10:46: He says you have to find the intersection of three things: What people want, what you’re good at, and what you’re passionate about. It all boils down to the basic idea that competition will always follow. If you can synchronize these three, you’re in a good position.
#10:48: Jimmy: “4. Don’t pivot. It’s kind of a buzzword these days and people just use that to change everything. But pivoting is all about changing the strategy but not changing the vision.” Jimmy goes on to elaborate on a startup that moved from a Groupon model to a Netflix model to eventually enter into personalization. They realized that their strength was engineering and so when they realized their core, they built a product to suit that. Now their product is doing really well and this is a great example of the right use of the word pivot.
#10:50: “5. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” If you look at Zynga, they consider themselves an analytics company masquerading as a gaming company. “The reason why Line and KakaoTalk chat apps are so compelling is because of their retention rate. After users visit an app seven times, for example, they would reach the threshold and users will use it forever. You should comprehensively understand the data rather than just measure downloads and monthly unique visitors”
#10:52: “Dealing with data is super important and it’s more than just the metrics.” Please measure, you’re not Steve Jobs.
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