How to survive your expansion in Korea: lessons from a Southeast Asian startup

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

There are certain things that used to come to mind when I thought of Korea. K-pop, cosmetics, and Kimchi. But Korea had a deeper allure.

I’m the founder and CEO of YouthsToday, a platform that connects students with brands to fund and promote events. In a country where education is king, we knew that we had enormous market potential. But we also knew it wasn’t going to be easy with zero Korean speaking team members and zero brand presence.

Beyond the market potential, Korea seemed like the next step for us. We’d raised a substantial seed round, which gave us a US$1.25 million valuation, and we’d established ourselves in multiple SEA countries. If we wanted to continue to grow, we had to make a dent in north Asia. Korea was calling.

After being accepted into the K-Startup Grand Challenge, which gave us additional funding, office space, corporate connections, and a government stamp of approval in Korea, we packed our bags and set off to see what we could accomplish in just three months.

Since we joined the program, I’m happy to say we’ve been signing new customers and partnerships much faster than expected.

Here are three things we learned since stepping off the plane at Incheon Airport:

Network like your life depends on it (it does)

When I first arrived, it seemed impossible to find people to connect with and talk about our platform, let alone find investors or clients. Everyone I met spoke Korean, and their limited English made it difficult to pursue any leads. I also found that Koreans tend to trust their countrymen more than foreigners. So what did we do?

We found that after hiring our country manager, Matthew, our progress with following up leads and clients quickly improved. Matthew is fluent in Korean and English and helped bridge any cultural barriers we faced with new contacts.

We also connected with some mentors set up for us by Grand Challenge. There are a number of established foreign companies in Seoul and, more often than not, the founders/CEOs are happy to provide some advice or introduce you to a potential client or lead.

Work and cultural differences

To be honest, I totally underestimated how dedicated Koreans are to their work. Even elementary school students spend hundreds of hours studying just to apply for prestigious after school programs.

(Side story: one Thursday, it was the dreaded Korean SAT, which students spend years studying for. Traffic was rerouted on the morning of the exams to make sure students arrive with minimal stress.)

While being incredibly hard working, I found that Koreans will be very clear on what they can and cannot do well. When we were interviewing for our first Korean hire, it was clear who matched our requirements, which made the hiring process quite straightforward.

Koreans are really nice people. Almost to a fault! If your product is bad, it will be tough to get 100 percent honest feedback. I’d suggest using an anonymous poll or asking friends of friends to review your product. Without some network of professional contacts or industry experts, it will be tough to get honest feedback.

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Our future in Korea